Heart without a beat
by Luna Ardere
Summary: Once upon a time there was an undead rogue, and then there was the giggly, human holy priest. Enough said, I guess.
1. Chapter 1

It was a grubby little town, much like any other on this side of the mountains.  
The young priestess sought shelter from the rain in an inn, together with several other members of the Alliance. She talked to no one, but listened.  
She was good at listening, that was what she had been taught by her old and blind trainer; listening, and keeping your mouth shut until there was something worth saying. She wasn't always good at living by it.  
Beatrix had always had a natural talent for magic, and her kind and gentle manner had early on marked her as a good candidate for the priest class. She was small by growth, fragile by nature and spoke with a tender voice. It was in her opinion very important to uphold a fine appearance, so she dressed in bright robes and even painted her nails a pearly white.  
When the rain stopped she left the inn, glad to be out in the fresh air again since the house had been as grubby and stuffed as the rest of the village's buildings.  
There was a fair camped outside the village, seeking to lighten the minds of the villagers and the soldiers of the Alliance, as well as their purses.  
Beatrix smiled as she walked between the stalls, looking at whatever the travelling dealers could offer. There were jewellery, weapons, food, strange and exotic plants and animals, and a many things she never even dared guess what was for.  
Then the voice of a man she had noticed earlier in the inn made her turn and stare.  
His gleaming armour and brilliant blue cape with the Alliance lionhead-crest on made him stand out in this dirty and generally brown-clad crowd. A small sigh escaped the priestess' lips as the paladin winked to her, or at least in her general direction.  
She even knew his name; Darren "Orcwrangler" Stronguard. The reason for the nickname she would not even consider guessing at, it just seemed a right title for a paladin with such a gleam to him.  
Right now he was telling everyone who would listen, which was quite a crowd, of his latest meeting with the Horde scum, and how he had been told there was a rather large sum for whoever could deliver his head to the warchief.  
Beatrix listened to his stories for a little while, and when his little party of friend turned back to the inn she found herself automatically following them. The night was falling, a soft and moonlit night, as made for romance and tales of great deeds.  
Darren Stronguard and his party stopped by the stables to cheek that their horses got the best looking-after the little town could offer. Beatrix stood a little away from them, leaning against a wall and feeling slightly silly. In the chilly shade of the building she decided to walk back to the inn on her own, when something moved in the corner of her eye.  
She wasn't the only one who had seen it, the paladin had not become famous because he liked to brag, well, not _just_ because he liked to brag. He had really done great deeds and was always ready to draw his big and, above all; shiny sword and face any foe.  
Once more the shadows around the stables moved, this time revealing several enemies. As the paladin and his friends countered the attack there was a shout from the forest and suddenly the place swarmed with Hordes.  
Beatrix had not been in many battles yet, but she had learned a little about the races of the Horde when she was a student. Orcs were easy to spot, same with the tauren and trolls. She recognised the burning glow in the eyes of the beautiful blood elves, and she had seen undead people before.  
The enemies were many, and she was both nervous and excited as she cast her healing spell on a human warrior who looked like he needed it. The next second a blood elf had shouted something and pointed a lance in her direction. She did not need much imagination to understand this meant: "Healer! Take her out."  
Readying for the attack, Beatrix took two steps back and had the words of her shielding spell on her lips as she backed into something. There was a sound so small she would not have heard it if she had not at the same time felt the dagger that was placed against her throat.  
In front of her the paladin and his team were struggling and shouting desperately. Their own healer was at the ground, blooded fingers clutching his throat.  
Telling herself to be brave, and knowing she would be killed either way, Beatrix raised her hands to at least give the other priest a chance at keeping his friends alive.  
Before she had the time to cast the spell she was slammed into the wall. Her eyes were drawn to the knife that had been at her throat a second ago, but now stood in the wall just inches from her head. The arm holding the knife squeezed against her throat, it felt sharp and thin beneath the black clothes of the rogue.  
"This is not your fight," a slightly muffled voice hissed. "Stay out of it."  
Beatrix forced her eyes from the blade and looked into the blackness of a hood. Two glowing eyes looked back at her and the strange smell of old dust and decay filled her senses. She made a small squeak when realising the creature holding her was no longer alive.  
In fear of what she might see she cast a simple light-spell, for he had done no attempt of restraining her hands. The light flashed, revealing nothing more than a black mask over the rogue's mouth and nose, as well as two surprised, glowing eyes. The rest of the visible face was dominated by a thin scar that began somewhere under the mask, crossed the ridge of the nose and disappeared into dark strands of hair. The greyish cloak he was wearing faded into the shadow as the priestess' light died out.  
Beatrix' eyes fell on something happening behind the rogue and she opened her mouth to scream. Over the undead's shoulder she could see Darren Stronguard, or at least his body, lying on the ground. There was a chorus of cheering from the Horde as an orc lifted the paladin's head high in the air, and then the enemies disappeared into the darkness again.  
Beatrix felt her body turn limp and cold. Tears were streaming down her face as the rogue raised the hand holding the knife and brought it down in a swift stroke.

****

Here is chapter one of my new story. Most of it thus far is finished. I just have to have the bother to upload it ^^

Reason for the story; Someone told me there was no way in Hell I could make a undead cute. I will prove them wrong as this story develops ;) So there ^^

Take away all the UnNatural spaces and go here to see my sucky sketches of the rogue:

ht tp:// luvalentine. deviantart. com/ art/ Valente-Sketches- 130851370


	2. Bony

The rogue listened while the rest of the group planned the assault on the Alliance caravan that was carrying the wages for the soldiers in a nearby fortress.  
It was winter and he was grumpy because this made the joints in his legs ache.  
"Rogue! You are responsible for the healer," the self-proclaimed leader of the group, a blood elf named Lartho, barked in rough orcish.  
The rogue just rolled his gleaming eyes while nodding slightly, he hated having to take out healers. It felt a bit low, even by his standards, to kill someone who couldn't even protect themselves if they had the chance.  
As they made their way through the snowy bushes surrounding the pass where they would start the ambush, the other blood elf in the group bumped into the rogue as he slid on the icy ground.  
"Hey! Watch it, Bones!" the elf hissed.  
Before he could take another step there was a knife against his crotch.  
"You want me to make a proper lady out of you, girly?" the rogue asked, ignoring the annoyed shushing from the rest of the group.  
Lartho turned and sighed before saying something in his own language to the other elf who nodded and moved away from the rogue.  
"You better not be talking bad about me, elf. Or I will make sure the next time you close your eyes will be your last."  
Lartho held an elegant finger to his perfect lips and gave the rogue a bored look.  
"Here dey come!" the female trollpriest who were their healer whispered urgently, making all eyes turn to the road.

The rogue's feet were soundless on the hard, icy crust on the grass beside the road. He moved in his own world, silent and invisible.  
"Damn," he swore inside as he looked at his target. The priest was wearing a hooded cloak in the cold, and a hood always meant it would be difficult to find the throat. Instead of a clean, swift cut this would mean he first had to pull the hood of the man.  
The caravan guards were going down quickly, and he had to take the healer out fast. His hand shot forwards, grabbing the hood and attempting to drag it off. To his surprise the healer was so light the man lost his balance because of the sudden pull on his cloak and stumbled to the ground.  
Knife at the ready, the rogue watched the healer fight against the cloak like a drowning man, and he noticed the slim hands covered by with leather gloves. Oh well, man or woman did not matter, as long as it was alive it would bleed. He dived forward to stab and stopped.  
"Oh no. Not you..."  
*

As the group gathered at the previously decided meeting-point they all looked in shock at the girl who sat all tied up under the cover of a tree.  
"Didn't know we take prisoners," the orc warlock snorted as he sat down by the fire the rogue had prepared since he was the first to get there.  
The rogue just snorted back, not feeling the least inclined to explain. He had taken refuge on a low branch above the girl, and sat on his heels, all hunched up in the grey cloak.  
When Lartho arrived he was asked to explain himself, and quickly.  
"She's a demon," he said, nodding to himself and staring into the fire.  
There was a muffled protest from the gagged girl.  
"A demon?" Lartho said, raising one curved eyebrow intrigued. "And that's not more of a reason to kill her? And speak orcish when you're with us, Bones. Not all of us speak common."  
Ignoring the nickname, the rogue bent his head to one side and sighed.  
"Very well," he barked in orcish. "So I cannot kill her. She's not a demon. I just cannot kill her. I've tried before, and I cannot. End of story."  
"I would have no problem killing her..." Hectoan, the other elf on the team, volunteered.  
There was a glint of steel in the rogue's hand, and they all took a step back. They knew too well how good his aim was, even when the daggers were being hurled, and there had been many discussions about how many knives it was possible to hide on such a thin figure. When asked, the rogue had looked at them and said: "Enough to kill you all and mark the graves." Which really was the end of that discussion.  
Now, as the fire was reflected in the rogue's eyes, nobody wanted to find out if he had told the truth.  
"I'd like to see you try," he told Hectoan, slipping back to common now he was angry.

Beatrix stirred beneath the tree. She understood enough of the conversation to grasp the fact that her future was being discussed. After the blood elf who seemed like a leader had stared at the rogue for a while he sighed and sat down to split the day's loot between himself and the rest of the group.  
Soon there was much cheering when the gold had been counted, and the general mood of the team improved, because it would be a long winter and such an amount of gold would keep you warm for some time.  
The rogue even jumped down from his branch and found a place beside the fire where the female troll now was roasting some meat.  
Beatrix watched him curiously as he listened and scoured the group constantly with his eyes. He seemed so alert, as if he expected that anything could happen at any time.  
He had taken off his hood, but not his mask, revealing half-long, dark, uncombed hair which seemed to live its own, solitary life on his head without him bothering it much. The scar she had noticed across his face went over his scalp, leaving a line without hair, and ended just behind an ear.  
She recalled the incident half a year before, and now she realised why he never had attempted to grab her arms: The one hand still attached to him had at the moment been busy with holding a knife against her throat, and the stump of the left arm, which ended somewhere around his elbow, would not be much use in combat, if he hadn't developed a technique of elbowing people to death.

Beatrix spent the night half asleep on the back of a skeletal horse. She didn't get to sleep much, because every time she did her body slumped forward against the rogue's and made him nudge her back to consciousness.  
Sometime before dawn they reached the outskirts of a Horde settlement, and as the sun rose over snowy hills the ragged, but now also rather rich group of fortune-hunters scrambled into the place's inn.  
This was the place where they would split up, some would stay and some would go, in pairs or solitary, looking for work were they could find it, because as long as there was the prospect of making money none of them would take a day off.  
"What are you gonna do then?" Habba, the female orc in the party asked the rogue.  
He liked Habba, or at least he did not dislike her as much as the rest of the world's population. She was the only one in the group who did not call him Bones, and she always cleared her throat in a certain fashion when her mate, the warlock, talked badly to or about the rogue, which always shut the warlock up pretty quickly.  
"I'm gonna find somewhere to get rid of this thing," the rogue nodded towards Beatrix, who sat on the bench beside him, still gagged and with her hands bound.  
"You're not gonna kill her?" Habba actually sounded concerned.  
"What do you care? You did not say anything about not killing her when we were ambushing."  
"Well, that was before you dragged her with us. Now we kind of know her a bit, and she does look like such a sweet girl..."  
"No," he moaned with annoyance. "I'm not gonna kill her. Because I cannot... Just look at those big, blue, pathetic eyes! It would be like kicking the fluffiest puppy in the world!"  
"You haven't considered keeping her? Like a pet? I'm sure she would be a great pet." Habba smiled big and friendly to the girl and Beatrix nervously smiled back behind her gag.  
"Shut up," the rogue said, slumping forward until his face was pressed against the table.  
"Maybe you should consider feeding her," Habba continued, pretending not to notice the rogue's foul mood. "She haven't had anything to eat yet, and you've been dragging her around since forever."  
"Just since yesterday," he corrected. "And I haven't eaten anything in some days either, and I'm not complaining."  
Habba sighed, and motioned the barmaid over to order some soup for the girl.  
"But she is a woman and besides; living people need food."  
"Okey," the rogue moaned. "Good point, and now; please shut up. You are making my head ache! As if this cold weren't bad enough."  
Although the rogue was generally grumpy and unpleasant, the winter always made him especially nasty. His joints ached and his entire body creaked when he came into a warm room after having been in the cold, and right now that slow thaw was making his head ring.  
As the soup came on the table, he carefully released Beatrix' hands and let her remove the gag.  
"Behave!" he cautioned her, even though he probably did not have to.  
He watched her eat the soup, elegantly even though she had to be hungry. The rough steelspoon was held between two slim fingers, and he noticed her well-trimmed and painted nails.  
"Thank you," she smiled carefully when she had finished.  
The rogue waved his hand in the air as to say it was nothing and put his face back on the table again, trying to shut out the sounds in his head.

Beatrix listened and watched as the party one by one said their quick goodbyes and left. In the end only the rogue, Habba and her mate and the female troll had decided to spend the night and sat around the hearth of the inn, talking and drinking something warm to keep the chill of winter out. Beatrix had been give a cup of something that turned out to be a sort of thick and sweet-tasting tea.  
The rogue had not bothered to tie her up again, nor had he talked to her, so she just sat beside him trying to clear her mind and think of what she should do.  
In the end she decided to try to talk to him a bit, since he was the only one of the company who seemed to speak common.  
"Thank you for not killing me," she whispered without turning to look at him. "Twice."  
"Yeah," was all he said, and then, because he felt like he owed her it: "I'm sorry I dragged you along, and I'm sorry for hitting you over the head back then."  
"You've all been very friendly so far," was all she could think of. "And I'd rather be hit over the head than killed anytime."  
"Yeah. And in the morning I'll be taking you home."  
"Really?" She tried not to sound so surprised, but she had not expected to escape so easily.  
"Where do you live?"  
"In Stormwind..."  
"Well, maybe not quite home then," he admitted, and looked curiously at her when she giggled.

The rogue kept his promise and took Beatrix to the nearest Alliance camp the next morning. He still hadn't tied her up, but let her ride behind him on the skeletal horse, and did not even complain as she carefully put her arms around his thin waist.  
"This is as far as the undead-horse-express goes," he said when they were close enough to see the chimney smoke from the settlement.  
Beatrix dismounted after him and stood for a moment wondering what to say.  
"Well," she smiled eventually. "Thank you."  
She offered him her hand, and was slightly horrified by the feeling of his hand when he shook it. Even through the black gloves he wore she could feel the bones beneath it, and tried not to imagine what was left of the body beneath all that black cloth.  
"Will you tell me your name?" she asked politely, letting the bony hand go. "If I tell you mine."  
He shrugged and sighed silently.  
"I'm Beatrix," she said anyway. "I'm a holy priest, but I guess you've figured that out by now."  
"Everyone calls me Bones," the rogue whispered, as if it was a great secret. "Or Bony. I guess that'll do."  
"Bony." Beatrix giggled a little. "That's kind of cute."  
If the rogue could blush he would have. Instead he snorted and turned to his horse.  
"Stop showing up in my life," he said, but his voice had a softness to it. "Or my un-life, as it is."  
Beatrix smiled as she watched him ride away, feeling strangely sad to see him go.  
"Bony," she laughed and turned towards the village.

****

Chapter 2. Thanks for reading, and I hope you like it :)


	3. Jail

**I have decided I am going to put a piece of song-lyrics with each chapter, just because. It can be something I listened to when writing that inspired me, or just something that I feel belongs there. If you don't like it, just ignore it.**

This chapter's got "Bones" by Radiohead

*******'

Beatrix spent some months at home, trying to study a little. She was glad to find her friends were in Stormwind still, although after she had seen a little of the world their giggling and carefree behaviour sometimes got on her nerves.  
They usually sat around one of the city's fountains and told each other jokes and talked about men.  
This particular day they were talking about the new paladin they all had fallen in love with, when some guards escorted a row of filthy-looking prisoners towards the city prison in middle of town. The girls looked up as the prisoners passed them, and while the other girls giggled and smiled and waved at the soldiers, Beatrix stared at a ragged figure in the middle of the group.  
"Bony!" she said, filled with worry.  
"I know!" One of her friends said, taking her hand. "Isn't it absolutely horrid! They have no skin! Oh, isn't this exciting?"  
"Look at _that one_!" Another of the girls exclaimed. "It has only one arm!"  
Beatrix was looking at _that one_. Without his cloak and weapons he really looked like a skeleton, so thin and fragile. The legs of his trousers were torn, and revealed that the left leg had lost all skin and muscle from the knee down, causing him to drag that foot. Instead of the rogue-mask he had been wearing last she saw him he had a dirty piece of cloth tied over mouth and nose. Spots of old blood covered all his clothes, and made her wonder if undead could bleed, and what really held them together.  
The rest of the day she was lost in thought, and the next morning she made her way to the prison, under the excuse that she was doing a study on the races of the Horde and would like have a closer look at the prisoners.  
As she was led down into the catacombs she thought it really was amazing what you could get away with if you were pretty and could giggle and smile a bit.  
"What do you do to keep the prisoners from escaping?" she asked the jailer while twirling a lock of blond hair around her finger. It was one of her best tricks. It told whoever she was talking to that she was just a silly blonde girl who did not know much about the world and had a childish fascination of how the whole thing worked.  
"We have our tricks," the jailer grinned widely. "Like, right now we have a rogue, and them sort is always a bit tricky, because if you turn your back they disappear. So you just got to chain them to the wall, and that solves the whole problem. Ah, here we go..."  
Beatrix stopped by the cell and felt her heart beat violently against her ribs.  
The rogue was chained to the wall in his small cell. He sat resting his head against the cold stone wall and did not seem to notice that anyone was there.  
"Isn't that something?" the jailer asked her. "They are really vile creatures those undead. I've heard stories about what they do to prisoners, and I tell you; you wouldn't like falling into the hands of one of these!"  
"_You should only know_," Beatrix thought, still smiling her faint smile.  
There was a racket somewhere down the corridor and the jailer mumbled something before hurrying off to check what it was.  
Once left alone Beatrix went over to the steel bars of the cell and whispered:  
"Bony? It's me, Beatrix..."  
The glowing eyes turned towards her. He looked tired.  
"I'm not stupid," he hissed. "I can see it's you."  
"Well!" She was a bit disappointed he did not seem pleased to see her. "Here I come to see if I can help you, and anyway; that's no way to greet an old friend!"  
He placed his hand over his face, as if he thought she might go away if he didn't see her. She noticed he still had skin on three fingers, while two of them were clean, white bone.  
"Bony..." she added a sulk in her voice that would have worked on any living man.  
"Don't!" he snarled. "Don't use your cute voice and big eyes and the twirling of the hair on me! I don't have the patience for it! I am chained in _your_ Alliance prison, I am aching and tired and I really want you to go away and stop bothering me!"  
Beatrix sniffed and dried her eyes with the back of her hand.  
"If that's what you want," she whispered.  
"And don't cry! I am not falling for crying... I..."  
She pushed out her lower lip a bit, knowing very well it made her look like a sulking child. Now if she only could make her voice tremble too.  
"I only wanted to see you and help," she sobbed, thinking: _Oh my, Beatrix! You really are nasty!_  
"Don't," he started, but she could hear his voice loosing the edge. "I didn't mean... I only... I..."  
He crawled over to the bars and looked intently at her.  
"Are you just playing?" he asked, but there was spark in his eye that told her it might just be possible there was a smile beneath the cloth around his face.  
"Yes," she admitted, drying away the tears and putting a small hand over the bony digits that held on to one of the iron bars. The touch made them both tremble a bit, she because his fingers were cold as death, and he because it was just generally weird to be touched.  
"I will help you," she whispered. "In any way I can. You have saved my life and I owe it to you."  
"I haven't saved your pathetic life," he said, the old poison back in his voice. "I just didn't kill you."  
She disarmed him by stroking her fingers over the two smallest fingers on his hand, the ones that were all bone.  
"Stop that," he said, but he did not move his hand.  
She heard the jailer coming back and moved away from the cell again.  
"Nasty piece of work, ain't it?" the soldier asked and kicked after the rogue's fingers.  
"He's not an _it_," Beatrix commented, trying hard to keep the anger from her voice.

When her friends came the next day with an idea, she could do nothing than nod and agree it was a good idea, even though it probably wasn't. They wanted to go into the prison and have a closer look at the Horde-prisoners.  
"We've never seen those creatures up close!" a small girl called Bunny exclaimed. She looked like she was going to explode by sheer excitement.  
To Beatrix' relief there was a different jailer than the day before on duty, but he was just as fond of blonde girls who twirled their hair in the right way. He gave the girls the grand tour before he had to take care of something else, and left them with a warning:  
"All the cells are locked, so you are perfectly safe on your own, just don't go too close to the bars. And come find me when you're all done and I will lock you out through the main gate."  
Beatrix walked behind the others down the cellblock. She was nervous about going too close to a certain cell, but when her friends gathered around it she could not get away.  
"Look. It's that one from yesterday! The undead!" Bunny had still not exploded, but Beatrix was certain it could not be long before she did.  
The rogue was laying on his side, his back almost up against the cell bars, and seemed to be asleep. The stump of his left arm rested along his side and made cause for comment.  
"Look at it's arm. Ugh," the girl swallowed and made a noise indicating she wanted to throw up.  
One of the girls held out a foot and pushed at the rogue's back with it.  
"Oh, poke it!" Bunny squealed, but now Beatrix had had enough.  
"He's not an it!" she said sharply.  
"Oh, if you know so much about undead, why don't you poke him," Helena, the leader of the girls, said, sticking her nose in the air.  
With a sigh, Beatrix knelt beside the cell and touched the rogue's shoulder. There was a sound of awe from the others.  
"Be careful, Bee!" Bunny put a hand on Beatrix' shoulder as if to be ready to pull their friend away. "He might bite you!"  
Beatrix pulled her hand to her, and when she touched his shoulder again her fingers were closed like a fist. She leaned into the bars for a moment and let her hand slip over his side and stomach. As she felt his hand touching hers, finding what she held, a feeling of relief flowed over her.  
"You are so brave!" one of the girls told her as she stood back up. "He could have ripped your arm off!"  
"Yeah," Beatrix said, making sure to giggle excitedly.

*********************************

I don't want to be crippled cracked  
Shoulders, wrists, knees and back  
Ground to dust and ash  
Crawling on all fours

When you've got to feel it in your bones

Now I can't climb the stairs  
Pieces missing everywhere  
Prozak painkillers

When you've got to feel it in your bones

*********************************

**I'm sorry about the lack of spacing between the lines. I have changed computers and is now writing in another program, so when I upload things here they become all clustered. **

**But thanks for reading!**

**And I am sorry for those of you who are disappointed in this story, but no one is making you read it. If you don't like it, just don't read it (I've actually(!) had a lot of PM's telling me how some of my regular fans don't like the story... and that's why I have been lazy with publishing.)**

**It's okey that you don't like it, but there's no point in telling me you have lost your trust in me as an author. Because; 1. Not everything I write is about the same characters, even though I know people love them. 2. Sometimes I just write because I need to, without putting insane amounts of work into each sentence. The fanfictions are just something I do when the books are on hold or I need a break.**

**Sorry if that felt like a rant, but point is: Yes: send me constructive criticisme, and yes: tell me what you think of the story, but don't go whining and verbally abuse me just because I am living up to your expectations.** **That will only lead to one thing: One less author on Fanfiction. (This goes out to the 14 people who found a reason to PM me with their rants. Here's mine for you!"**


	4. Knives and cigarettes

That evening Helena and the enthusiastic Bunny showed up in front of Beatrix' lodgings. She met them in the street as she came from the library and was surprised to see their anxious faces.  
"Have you heard it? Has anyone told you?" Bunny asked, almost jumping up and down with excitement.  
"Told me what?" Beatrix looked from one to the other and wondered what in the world could be so important.  
Helena took her arm and dragged her a little away from the street, behind some huge pots of flowers.  
"You know that undead," she whispered, her voice filled with worry. "He has escaped!"  
"Really?" Beatrix wanted to sing and dance and clap her hands, but she managed to let her inner self do the celebrating while she kept a straight face on the outside.  
"Yes!" Helena checked around her, as if she was worried that anyone was listening. "The soldiers are searching the entire city, and the gates have been locked down. There's dog patrols and everything! Tawnee's brother is out searching with them, it was him that told me, and he says _that thing_ was a rogue, so they're worried he could be anywhere!"  
Beatrix had never heard Helena speak so many exclamation marks at once.  
"Have you told anyone what we did?" Bunny squeaked nervously.  
"What?"  
"That we were there! That we _poked it_!"  
"No. I haven't told anyone anything."  
"Good," Helena nodded. "None of us have said anything, and that's the way we gotta keep it. Otherwise someone could start blaming us. Now we should get inside and stay there, lock all the windows and doors and hope they catch him, or he has left the city."  
"Why would we lock ourselves in?" Beatrix asked, not quite following the line of thought.  
"It will be wanting revenge!" Bunny hissed, clinging to Beatrix' arm. "It might come for us, Bee. For you! _We poked it_!"

As Beatrix went inside, relieved by the news, she started to wonder if the rogue had really gotten out before the city was closed off. She hoped he had, but the knowledge that he at least was free was enough to comfort her.  
She ate her evening meal and went to bed, happy to still see the soldiers scouring the streets outside, which meant they had not found anyone yet.  
Her lodgings were in an attic with windows in the roof so that she could see the stars, and one window that allowed her to look out at the street below. Opening that window she listened to the sounds from the city, enjoying the chill of a night breeze against her face. There were distant barks of dogs, quiet shouts between soldiers, the silence of the night falling over a city that crawled with life in the day.  
She slipped between her covers, putting her pink, fluffy slippers beside the bed and went to sleep.  
Half an hour later she awoke with the feeling that someone had spoken her name.  
"Hmm…." she mumbled, still half asleep.  
"Bee?" a voice said from somewhere beside the bed.  
It took a couple of seconds before Beatrix' brain managed to put the pieces into place. Bee; that was her. She was in her bed. She had been asleep, and now she was waking up. Someone had spoken. A voice. _That voice_!  
She opened her eyes wide and stared into the dark room. Just beside her bed there was a shade, nothing more than a change of texture in the darkness, but there was something there.  
"Bony?" she ventured, her heart racing.  
The shadows moved a little and now she could see the figure kneeling on the floor beside the bed.  
"Thanks for the wire."  
She lit the bedside candle and winked at him.  
"No problem. I figured you could manage to do something with it."  
"A lockpick would have done the job too."  
He looked even more tired and worn than usual, even for an undead.  
"I don't expect you smoke?" he said, eyes searching the room.  
"No. I don't like smoke. I constantly tell my landlord he should quit it."  
"That'd be the fat man snoring two floors down?"  
"Yes."  
"Be right back."  
The candle flickered and died as the shadows trembled and seemed to swallow the rogue. Beatrix almost held her breath through the minutes that passed before a hand pulled teasingly at her bedclothes.  
"Back," he announced and she heard him grab the box of matches from the bedside table.  
"I'm going out on the roof," he told her and this time he did not disappear, but opened one of the rooftop-windows to climb out.  
Beatrix put her feet in the fluffy slippers and wrapped herself in a blanket before silently following him.  
He had found her sanctuary between the chimneys on the roof where you could sit in peace, sheltered from the wind and invisible from below. Beatrix used it when she needed to read and did not want anyone to disturb.  
She wrinkled her nose as he lit a match and took a deep drag at the cigarette.  
"You know, those things will kill you," she said out of habit, keeping her voice so low it was barely audible.  
"No problem there then," the rogue answered, blowing a ring of smoke out in the air. "Death by smoking is not something I worry much about."  
"I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I did not mean…"  
He did not let her finish the sentence.  
"Off course you didn't. You never mean anything in a bad way. You are just not like that."  
She thought he sounded bitter and decided to shut up a while and follow her teacher's advice; watch and listen.  
She watched him. He had adopted her favourite position; back against the big chimney, feet on the little ledge by the small chimney and head tilted back so you could see the stars above. The stolen cigarette lay balanced between two fingers and she noticed how he was careful to let his hand cover the lower part of his face whenever the ember glow of the cigarette fell upon it. The sweet smell of the smoke was almost pleasant in the cold night air, and it masked the smell of his dirty clothes as well as the smell of him, which she tried very hard to dismiss as simply unpleasant.  
He sighed relaxed and shifted his position before releasing another great cloud of smoke. This time Beatrix could swear she saw the smoke coming in two streams from his face.  
"Why do you do that?" she asked as he made certain to cover his face with the hand again.  
"What?" he whispered, sounding sleepy and relaxed.  
"You cover your face all the time. With the mask, and the cloth, and now your hand when you smoke. Why?"  
There was silence from the other side of the space between the chimneys, and for a moment Beatrix was worried he'd make a run for it rather than answer.  
"Okey," he said eventually.  
Then he removed his hand and blew another stream of smoke, keeping the glow of the cigarette close enough to throw a hazy light on his face.  
If Beatrix' heart had not been so overcome with compassion at the moment she would have laughed as the smoke made its way through a hole in his cheek. The cheek had been stitched up from the jaw and almost up to his temple, but whoever did the sewing had not been very good at it and just where the cut crossed his teeth one of the stitches had fallen out, thus making a gap.  
"It's okey if you wanna laugh," he told her generously.  
She shook her head and just smiled instead.  
"I wear the mask because it's a bitch when things get in the cut and I have to stitch it back up. It's not because I'm vain. I'm not vain. I have no illusions about trying to look normal, I think one should be man enough to admit one looks like something a raptor chewed on."  
This made Beatrix giggle silently.  
"Oh, shut up," he told her, but his voice had just a hint of humour to it.  
They sat in silence. He fired up another smoke and she cleared her throat to let him know she did not approve.  
"It helps me forget the cold," he smiled.  
She could not stop her mouth before the question popped out:  
"Do you feel cold? Do you feel things?"  
"Yes!" he sounded a bit annoyed.  
"So-rry." She made a face. "I just don't know much about the undead."  
"Forsaken."  
"What?"  
"Forsaken. I don't like the word _undead_, it sounds unnatural. Forsaken, that's what we call ourselves. We're the Forsaken, the ones led by the Queen."  
It dawned on Beatrix that this was the first conversation they had that actually was somewhat serious. She found this both nice and a bit worrying, because it meant their relationship had gone from a state of "we're enemies, but not exactly hostile" to "we are just two old friends having a smoke and a talk on a roof".  
"So you feel the cold," it was more a statement than a question.  
"Yeah. And I hate cold. It makes my joints ache and my head ring."  
It felt like such a perfect moment up there between the chimneys that Beatrix forgot all her prejudice and fear and moved to sit closer to the rogue, and then she put her blanket carefully over the bony legs.  
"What… are you doing?" he asked, blowing an army of small smoke-rings.  
"I thought you might be cold, and I am a very nice person."  
For the first time she heard him laugh. It was a short and harsh sound, but it sounded happy nevertheless.  
"Yeah, you are. You are, Bee."  
"Why do you call me that?"  
"I heard your little friends call you that in the jail. They're certainly a sharp gang of… of… of girls." He smiled, making the badly sewn cut crinkle.  
"They're good friends," she argued. "And at the moment they are terrified that you are going to come after us because _we poked you_. They have probably locked all windows and doors and cannot sleep."  
There was another little laugh as the rogue lit his third cigarette.  
"I can't get out of the city yet," he then said, frowning slightly. "They closed the gates before I had a chance that way. And then there is the problem of the soldiers and dogs in the streets. I'm in a bad shape right now and just need to rest a bit." He looked at her as if inviting her to take the hint in his words before continuing: "I need a favour, Bee."  
"Anything for you, Bony."  
"It's Valante."  
"What?"  
"My name... I know it's not much of a name, but you do what you can with what you've got." To her surprise he stumped the halfsmoked cigarette against the big chimney and closed his eyes, sighing. "My friends, back when I had any, used to call me Val. That was before, you know, the whole Undead-thing."  
"Forsaken," Beatrix corrected him.  
"Yeah."  
There was another silence, filled with the sounds a sleeping city make, and Beatrix' breathing.  
"You know," the rogue said when he felt he could not stand listening to the sound of her quiet intakes of breath any more. "I grew up in this city."  
"You're kidding me!"  
"No, honestly. It was a very long time ago and it has changed much, but I did."  
"Did your family live here?" she asked, feeling slightly worried again that he suddenly was sharing things with her, things she had a feeling she was the first in a long time to hear.  
"Nah, never had much of a family. I was a street urchin, I lived from what me and the other boys could steal and find and beg. And then the king, the old king, long time ago… he had this idea, that if there were less street-boys there would be less crime, and in the end there was just me left. I guess I was too cunning for them soldiers."  
"What happened to your friends?"  
"I never learned. But I left, and eventually I ended up un…. Forsaken."  
Beatrix was staring at him now. Her eyes were wide and filled with amazement.  
"What?" he asked suspiciously.  
"It just that… I never thought that there was a story… I mean; I never thought you could be just like anyone else… Just different."  
She knew she wasn't making much sense, but the rogue seemed to get the point. Now he was the one staring curiously.  
Then he snorted, pulled up the cloth to cover his face and said:  
"I've talked too much."  
Without another word he walked to the window, light feet not making a sound on the tiles of the roof. Beatrix watched him drop down into the house before she followed, feeling strangely lightheaded.  
As she closed the window after her she looked over the room trying to spot Valante.  
"Where are you?"  
"Val," she added when he did not answer immediately.  
"I'm asleep, and so should you be."  
She crept into bed, and realised how tired she was just before she fell into a land of strange dreams.

***************************

Ich liebe dich  
Ich liebe dich nicht  
Ich liebe dich nicht mehr  
Ich liebe dich nicht mehr oder weniger als du  
Als du mich geliebt hast  
Als du mich noch geliebt hast

Die schönen Mädchen sind nicht schön  
Die warmen Hände sind so kalt  
Alle Uhren bleiben stehen  
Lachen ist nicht mehr gesund und bald

Such ich dich hinter dem Licht  
Wo bist du  
So allein will ich nicht sein  
Wo bist du

Die schönen Mädchen sind nicht schön  
Die warmen Hände sind so kalt  
Alle Uhren bleiben stehen  
Lachen ist nicht mehr gesund, und bald

Ich suche dich hinter dem Licht  
Wo bist du  
So allein will ich nicht sein  
Wo bist du  
Ich such dich unter jedem Stein  
Wo bist du  
Ich schlaf mit einem Messer ein

Wo bist du

*******************************

I love you  
I love you not  
I love you no more  
I love you no more or less than you  
Than you loved me  
When you still loved me

The pretty girls are not pretty  
The warm hands are so cold  
All clocks have stopped  
It's no longer good to laugh, and soon

I'll look for you behind the light  
Where are you?  
I don't want to be so alone  
Where are you?

The pretty girls are not pretty  
The warm hands are so cold  
All clocks have stopped  
It's no longer good to laugh, and soon

I look for you behind the light  
Where are you  
I don't want to be so alone  
Where are you  
I look for you under every stone  
Where are you  
I fall asleep with a knife

Where are you?

*********************

Thanks for reading.

This chapter got the lyrics "Wo bist du" by Rammstein  
I've posted both the original and wrote an english translation for those people who don't know German. I'm sorry if the translation suck, I'm not that good in German.


	5. A corpse under the bed

The next morning when she searched the room quietly by daylight, Beatrix found the rogue sleeping, or whatever the undead did when they put their head down, under her bed, with a half-empty pack of cigarettes held tightly in his hand.  
She wrote a quick note, explaining she had gone out to tell her friends he had not eaten her yet, and would be back shortly.  
Beatrix made her way over to the poorer part of town, where she usually did not spend much time and people would not know her. There she went from one little shop to another, buying just one or two things in each. She felt weird when the shopkeeper asked her if it was a gift and she told the lie that it was for her brother. Her "brother" was even responsible for Beatrix buying the first pack of cigarettes she ever had.  
Helena and Bunny and the girls were nowhere to be seen, and Beatrix supposed they sat behind their locked doors and windows somewhere, being nervous and wondering how you avoided someone you couldn't see.

There was still no motion in the body under her bed when she returned, but she had not expected it. He seemed to have shut down, like an overworked gadget.  
Lying down on her stomach on the floor she looked him over with worry.  
_There's a corpse under my bed_, her thoughts sneakily betrayed her. _And he's my friend_, they added as she felt guilty about the first thought.  
She knew there was no point in checking for either pulse or breath, but she had to stall her hand anyway. He was lying so still she longed to see him move just to tell her there was something alive in that dead body.  
"Bony?" she whispered, touching his arm carefully, thus almost committing suicide.  
The rogue had a knife at her throat in seconds, bumping his head twice on the bottom of the bed in the process. While she was fighting to get her heart back to a normal beat and start breathing again she wondered where in the world that knife had come from.  
As recollection dawned on him, the rogue let the knife disappear somewhere in his torn clothes and looked suspiciously at the girl before him.  
"You've been out?"  
"Yes."  
"Have you found any soldiers to arrest me yet?"  
This time she did not giggle at his blunt forwardness. Instead she stood up so he could not see the look on her face and packed out the things she had bought from a brown paper bag.  
When he managed to pull himself out from beneath the bed everything was lying on her little kitchen table.  
"I bought you some things," she said, still feeling slightly upset about his comment. "We'll need to find you a way out of the city too later."  
She watches his eyes take in the things on the table and then he grabbed the two knives, juggling them in air as if to test their weight and accuracy, or just to impress her.  
"These are nice," he said, and she could tell he was grinning by how the corners of his eyes wrinkled.  
Then he grabbed the rogue-mask she had gotten from a grubby little shop she had quietly sworn never to visit again.  
"Yeah." The grin was still there somewhere under the cloth around his face and his voice was filled with satisfaction.  
"I'll just turn my back for a while and make us some tea, and you can change," she told him, turning to the bench and little stove that completed what she called her kitchen.  
While she was lighting the stove, filling the kettle and preparing some biscuits with cheese the sounds from behind made her struggle not to burst out laughing.  
She was sure she never had heard anyone sigh, snort and make so many general sounds of frustration while changing clothes. Once the rustling of cloth seized there was a long outburst of swearwords which made Beatrix want to put her hands over her ears.  
"There's no need for _language_," she pointed out.  
"These boots are giving me hell!" he hissed.  
While she argued with herself whether or not she should offer to help he tapped her on the shoulder and held up the black, soft leather boots with a grimace. When she smiled he sat down on a chair and watched her intently as she knelt before him and beckoned him to give her a foot. As she pulled one boot on the right foot, being careful not to touch his pale grey skin, her eyes fell on the left foot still resting on the floor. Five, no, four and a half bony toes were drumming a little tune on the wood.  
"Foot," she commanded, holding up the other boot.  
He obeyed the command and watched her curiously to see what she would do.  
"Bony," she laughed as he folded his toes. "Behave!"  
She wriggled the boot on while feeling goosebumps spread up her arms when she accidentally touched the bony leg.  
"There!" she said triumphantly as the boot slipped on. "Shiny and polished as a new-pressed coin."  
She looked him over and was rather impressed with what she saw.  
The black, long pants fitted perfectly, the shirt was a little too big, but the cloak looked perfect to _cloak_ in and with the mask in place he looked as menacing as she knew he would like to be. His gloved hand held up the leftover glove still lying on the table.  
"I couldn't just buy one," she giggled. "There are not so many one-armed men around."  
She hesitated before continuing:  
"You look really impressive, Bon… Val. Like something I wouldn't want to meet in a dark ally."  
She knew that he would take that as a huge compliment and she did mean every word. He was definitely something she wouldn't like to meet in a dark ally, or would have been if she hadn't just watched his toes do a tapdance on her floor.  
"You can call me Bony if you like," he laughed. "And that's a credit to you, for I have gutted people for less."  
"Thanks," she said, not knowing if it was such a credit to her.  
"'Cause when you say it, it sounds like I could be something pink and fluffy. And, don't' misunderstand me; although I do not like pink and fluffy, I am beginning to appreciate your friendship."  
Beatrix turned to the boiling kettle in a hurry and kept her back to him as she made the tea so he wouldn't see the emotion in her eyes.

They drank tea together at the table, and Beatrix had the manners not to ask how he could drink anything at all and where the tea really went, even though the question was burning in her mind.  
After the tea the rogue put his feet up on the kitchen table, and Beatrix did not complain since he had new shoes, but when he found the box of cigarettes she cleared her throat.  
"You want me to go outside? In daylight?"  
Beatrix frowned and looked at him while he tried to make his eyes big and innocent, but it wasn't very successful.  
"One." She held a finger up before his face. "And just if you let me laugh when you blow smoke through your cheek."  
"Sure." The corners of his eyes smiled as he pulled the mask down.  
From outside the door there suddenly was the sound of feet running up the stairs, and the next moment Beatrix' door flew up. Helena, Tawnee and Bunny stumbled in, all three asking the same question:  
"Bee, are you still alive?"  
Before Beatrix could get control over the situation the rogue was at the door. He closed it behind the girls and put his hand over Bunny's mouth just as she was about to scream.  
"Scream and I'll make sure you never do anything else," he hissed.  
"Please, girls," Beatrix said quietly. "Calm down and I'll explain."  
"It's him! It the one we poked!" Bunny squeaked when she regained the use of her mouth.  
Valante was leaning against the door, a knife casually held in his hand, indicating that no one was leaving the room anytime soon.  
"It really is, isn't it, Bee?" Helena looked suspiciously at Beatrix.  
Beatrix looked at Valante, who winked at her. She figured it meant "it's up to you".  
"Girls," she said with a smile. "This is… Bony." It suddenly seemed very important to make the rogue seem pink and fluffy.  
"He's an undead. In case you haven't noticed," Helena said gravely.  
Beatrix sighed.  
"Yes, thank you, Helena. I don't think we had noticed."  
Bunny was still staring at the rogue, who was standing at the door oozing pure, menacing carelessness. She opened and closed her mouth several times before she eventually managed to speak:  
"I'm sorry we poked you. Please don't eat us; I'm sure we taste horrid!"  
"He's not going to eat you!" Beatrix whined, wondering for a second if she hadn't had the same thought once upon a time. She raised an eyebrow when she saw the rogue's eyes flash as he saw the opportunity to scare someone. Clearing her throat to tell him "Don't even think about it" she turned to the girls and said:  
"He has saved my life twice, and I owe him some help now that he needed it."  
Bunny's eyes went big.  
"Was he the one you told me about?"  
"Yes." Beatrix got a questioning look from Valante, but chose to ignore it.  
"Well, in that case," the overenthusiastic girl said seriously. "Very pleased to meet you, Mister Bony."  
The rogue looked at the hand that was offered him, to Beatrix and back at the hand again before the knife almost magically disappeared into his clothes somewhere.  
"Yeah," he said, taking the little hand in his gloved one. "I guess it's nice to meet you too, Miss Enthusiastic."  
This made Bunny giggle.  
"My name is Bunny," she smiled.  
"Off course it is… that was my next guess."

*****************************************

The one who survives by making the lives  
Of others worthwhile  
She's coming apart  
Right before my eyes  
The one who depends on the services she renders  
To those who come knocking  
She's seeing too clearly what she can't be  
What understanding defies

She says: I need not to need  
Or else a love with intution  
Someone who reaches out to my weakness  
And won't let go  
I need not to need  
I've always been the tower  
But now I feel like the flower trying to bloom in the snow

She turns up the light  
Anticipating night falling tenderly around her  
Watches the dusk  
The words won't come  
She carries the act so convincingly  
The fact is sometimes she believes it  
She can be happy with the way things are  
Be happy with the things she's done

And yet I need not to need  
Or else a love with intution  
Someone who reaches out to my weakness  
And won't let go  
I need not to need  
I've always been the tower  
But now I feel like the flower trying to bloom in the snow

Reach out, hold back  
Where is safety  
Reach out and hold back  
Where is the one who can change me  
Where is the one  
The one

I need not to need  
Or else a love with intution  
Someone who reaches out to my weakness  
And won't let go  
I need not to need  
I've always been the tower  
But now I feel like the flower trying to bloom in the snow

The danger and the power  
Friend and the foe

********************************

**Thanks for reading ^^**

**  
Lyrics this time is "Tower" by the brilliant Vienna Teng.**


	6. Secret

The next hour there was a brainstorm around Beatrix' kitchen table. It included tea and biscuits. All good brainstormings should include tea and biscuits.  
Tawnee and Helena was not too happy about the fact that their friend had helped someone from the Horde escape and now was hiding him in her room, but Bunny's brain had skipped that stage and gone straight to the_ you have an undead living in your room, how cool isn't that_ –stage.  
The brainstorm happened on paper, firstly because the girls had problems holding on to one thought for a longer period of time, and secondly because that was how you did a proper brainstorm.  
Tawnee was the appointed secretary and had come up with the headline: _ "The escape of Bony"_ which had caused quite a snigger from the bed where Valante had sought refuge with the excuse: "Brainstorming is not for me. My brain already rotted away a long time ago."  
This had gotten a good laugh from Bunny and even Tawnee, who seemed to think the whole business was like that time Bunny had brought home the snake.

_ The reptile had seemed a perfect pet for the little blonde; it liked to play and sleep and was the coolest accessory ever, until the day it stopped eating. Bunny had taken it to a cousin of hers who was a hunter because she was sick with worry.  
"He won't eat, but everything else seems normal," she had told him. "He even sleeps beside me at night."  
The cousin had told her the snake was dying and he would see to it, something that had made Bunny cry for weeks, but it would have been even worse to tell her the truth: that the snake slept beside her to measure whether or not it was long enough to eat her yet, and had stopped eating to save up for the feast.  
The reptile had later been kindly disposed of in some far off jungle. _

"You remember the snake," Helena, who was by far the brightest of the three, whispered in Beatrix' ear. "_ That_ is your snake." She nodded towards the bed.  
The rogue was lying with his legs dangling over the foot-end of the bed, and had, although Beatrix had cleared her throat several times, lit a cigarette. Now he was happily blowing clouds of smoke, and was back to his old habit of covering his face with the hand.  
"Bony?" Bunny had developed a way of saying his name that made it seem even more pink and fluffy than when Beatrix said it. She might as well have said; "Who's a good boy then?"  
"Yeah?" the rogue raised his head from the cuddly purple elek he had stuffed under it.  
"Did you eat your biscuit?"  
Wondering where she wanted with this rather strange question the rogue assured her that he had, indeed, eaten his biscuit.  
"Where did it go?"  
This puzzled him a bit, no one had ever bothered to ask him where the food they gave him went.  
"I put it in my mouth?" he ventured, trying to figure out where this conversation was going.  
"But where does it go?" Bunny was giggling now. "I know what happens to food when I eat it, but you are not alive and I really want to know where it went!"  
Beatrix was ready to jump to her feet if there was any indication of movement from the bed. She never knew how he would react to questions like that. To her relief he only sniggered and blew another armada of smokerings.  
"It becomes energy for the magic that keeps my body going even though I am rotting away," he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to talk about.  
"Okey…" Bunny seemed to consider this. "And how do you smoke when you can't breathe?"  
"I can breathe. I just don't need to. And as long as I have lungs that can be filled with smoke I will continue to have my poison. Any other questions while I'm at a roll?"  
"Yeah," this time it was Helena who spoke. "Why didn't you kill Beatrix? I'm sure you have killed women before."  
In the silence that followed Beatrix sent a prayer to the holy light that he would not turn out to be her snake.  
Valante's feet found the floor and he pushed himself up until he was sitting.  
"I have," he whispered, voice hard and cold. "I have killed many."  
"But why not Bee?"  
He moved so quickly Beatrix was just beginning to rise from her chair when he reached the table. She did not realise she was holding her breath before his hand touched her shoulder and broke the spell.  
"You know why," he whispered by her ear.  
Then, in the blink of an eye, he was back on the bed, seeming extremely interested in the stuffed purple elek.  
"Let him be," Beatrix told them. "No more questions. We have brainstorming to do."

The brainstorm resulted in a fair deal more or less good plans on how to, as the new headline stated; _"Free Bony"_.  
Most of the plans went in the lines of dressing the rogue up as something, be it flowergirl, priest or paladin, and hang around him in miniscule dresses that would distract the guards at the gate.  
When the girls finally ran out of biscuits the rogue came over to them and looked interested at the headline and then the multitude of plans on the page.  
"Or," he said, drumming his fingers on the table. "I could just walk out the way I did last time."  
Four pairs of eyes turned to look at him.  
"What?" four voices asked.  
"You were all having so much fun making all these funny little plans, and I didn't wanna bother you… but there is a way out of the city."

It was night.  
Bunny and Tawnee giggled their way over to a couple of guards patrolling the lower parts of the city. One of the guards came over and tried to explain that it might be dangerous for two lovely young ladies to walk around in the middle of the night.  
"Oh, yes," Bunny said, suddenly remembering something. "There was something about some prisoner escaping and everything."  
As she remembered this, so did Tawnee and both girls looked around them nervously.  
"I guess it would be our duty to get you to safety," the other guard, who had decided to join the conversation, told them while nudging his fellow soldier.  
"In fact, we were just going to go on patrol in the direction of your houses."  
Bunny giggled almost hysterically and put her hand on the guard's arm.  
"How absolutely marvellous! I didn't know that you knew where we live!"  
"Me neither," the guard laughed and escorted the giggling girl down the street.  
As the laughter died away, Helena went over to a grating in the ground and waited there until the grating started to move up and away as if it was lifted by some magical force, or something invisible.  
"It's light enough," a voice whispered. "You should be able to push it right back without difficulty."  
"Bony?" Helena crouched down to the hole where the grating had been and looked into the air where she thought the rogue was. "If you turn out to be her snake, I will have you killed," she told him, her voice cold as ice.  
Valante did not understand the part about him being a reptile, but he couldn't help counter such an open threat.  
"Been there, done that," he said, grinning although she couldn't see it.  
"I'd like to see you get up again from being crushed."  
"Point taken. I will try not to turn reptilian."  
With that he jumped down the hole. As he heard the grating slide back into place he scurried away down the sewer-channel.  
Beatrix and her horse were waiting when he crawled out from the bushes that hid the entrance to the sewer system of Stormwind.  
"Any trouble at the gate?" he asked, and snorted when she put a hand over her nose.  
"No. Urgent missions at night aren't that uncommon. And gods, you smell!"  
"You mean; worse than normal?"  
"Mhm! You smell like a thousand sewer-rats."  
"Must have been those little hairy things I ate on the way," he told her as he got up behind her.  
The brown mare did not like the smell either and shifted nervously. Beatrix tried to comfort by patting her. Then she felt the bony arm find its way around her waist and she urged the horse forward.  
"You know, Bony, busting you from jail is probably a once in a lifetime experience, and I'm glad. I've had a couple of small heart attacks these last two days, I'm sure."  
"Yeah, I know. I'm trying to kill you in a non-violent way."  
The following snigger earned him an elbow in the ribs.  
"Oh, shut up."

**************************************

You were from the North, I was from the South  
We were from opposite places, different towns  
But I knew it was good and you knew it was too

So we moved together like a ball and chain  
Minds becoming two halves of the same  
It was real, but in shadows it grew

Cos you've got a secret don't ya babe?

I would've shouted loud and broken through  
I would've given it all to belong to you  
But there were different plans, and different rules

You said "where I'm from there is a lock and key  
If you'd be so kind as to follow me  
I will show you the way to the rest of my sins"

Cos you've got a secret don't ya babe?  
And I should know

So this room was damp where your sins laid  
There was that smell in the air of an old place  
That hadn't seen much daylight in years

And you threw me down, said, "If ya don't mind  
I'm gonna leave you here until night time  
Then we can do what we want, my baby, out of the spotlight."

Cos you've got a secret don't ya babe?  
And I should know

For I'm your secret aren't I babe?  
Aren't I babe?

*********************************

**Another chapter for you all.**

**Lyrics are "Secret" with Missy Higgins. It's worth hearing, because I find it such a sexy song for some reason!**


	7. Lucky wire

It was a three days travel to get out of Elwyn forest, or three nights, since it was the only time safe for Valante.  
At daytime they hid out in the forest, Beatrix getting what the rogue teasingly called her_ beauty-sleep_, and him staying invisible while he kept watch over her.  
The second day she did not sleep much, because there were thoughts keeping her mind occupied.  
"How are you with a needle," the rogue asked her thoughtfully some hours before dusk.  
"Have you already torn your clothes?" she reprimanded. "I can try to stitch it up, but…"  
She stopped as he pulled his mask down and grinned. The cut had lost another two stitches and it didn't look pretty.  
"I just mess it up," he said, and she heard the unsaid plea.  
It was strange to touch the cold, dead skin of his face, but even stranger to be able to look into his cheek. The old stitches were rotting away, and she cut away a few of them, using the old holes for the new thread.  
"This is the weirdest thing I have ever done," she told him, carefully navigating the needle through the first hole, which was just above his jaw.  
The thread followed, but Beatrix did not dare to pull at it in case the fragile flesh could not take the strain.  
"Doesn't it hurt?" she asked.  
Valante shook his head, resulting in Beatrix loosing her needle.  
"Not much, a little maybe, but I don't notice it. I guess my body might be noticing, because it feels weird, but I don't think the signal reaches the brain. It has to be an excruciating pain before my body bothers to tell my brain. My body runs on magic, not nerves."  
She wanted to laugh at him, because the open cheek made his speech blurred and strange, but managed to hold it in.  
As she tied the last stitch she noticed something strange and reached beneath the collar of his shirt.  
"What?" he asked, grabbing her hand.  
"You have a piece of wire around you neck, I will just untangle it."  
"No, you won't."  
Beatrix lifted an eyebrow inquisitive.  
"It's my lucky wire. And I want it there."  
"You had a piece of wire?" She sounded a bit shocked. "Then you could have gotten out of jail without my help."  
The rogue put his hand on the wire as if to protect it from girls who tried to take it off.  
"No," he said. "I did not have a lucky wire then. Now I have one, and I intend to keep it."  
It started to dawn on Beatrix just which piece of wire he had tangled around his neck, and she gave him a look she normally reserved for five year old children who had just told her about a lucky penny, while sucking a lolly and holding a puppy with big, round eyes.  
"You never know when a wire can save your life," he continued. "If I had a wire back when I lost my leg the first time…"  
"Wait," she held up a hand. "You lost your leg? The first time?"  
"Yes. The left leg has a tendency to fall off. There's no skin and stuff holding it up, so from time to time it just doesn't want to stay attached."  
"But…" she tried to imagine what you did when your leg fell off. "But what do you do? Do you glue it back on?"  
"If I have glue, yes." The grin on his face was a little more in place now she had stitched the cheek. "Or I use thread or rope, I even once had to use a yellow ribbon. It made me slaughter three people."  
"The ribbon?"  
"The teasing."  
She nodded, that she could imagine.  
"I am gonna go to that little village we passed this morning," she told him. "And buy us something to eat before it gets dark, or at least; buy me something to eat."  
"I don't need anything. I ate a biscuit."  
Beatrix looked at the scrawny body with a sigh.  
"That was two days ago."  
"Yeah?" he looked back at her as if he couldn't understand what all the fuss was with humans who had to eat at all times. "I can't eat much. My body can only turn a little into energy, and if I eat too much it'll just come back up."  
Beatrix stood up and patted his head as she did.  
"I'll be back before you know it," she told him.

In fact, she was back before he knew it, without food, but with some sheets of paper in her hand.  
"Do you know what this is?" she asked, and he got the feeling she was very angry, so he just shook his head.  
"Then I'll read it to you, shall I not? It is the weekly newssheet for Elwyn forest. It came into the village today, and they had just one copy left," she shook the paper before his face. "And on page two it says: _The execution of twelve members of the Horde was carried out today_ – that is yesterday - _at noon. One of the prisoners' unfortunate escape has caused the guards at the city gates to be doubled the last days, but they have yet to catch the fugitive._ Don't laugh!"  
She pointed at him with a trembling finger, and there was so much fury in her eyes that the rogue didn't dare to interrupt her again.  
"_The thirteen members of the Horde that were apprehended last week were arrested under the charges of having pillaged the village of Horg, killing at least seventeen innocent villagers, as well as,_" Beatrix paused as she drew her breath, as if she needed some extra air to finish this. "_As well as having torched an orphanage, leaving more than a dozen children to burn inside the building._"  
She closed her eyes a moment, and he could see she was shaking.  
"I never…" he began, but she hurled the paper in his face and shook a fist at him.  
"Don't you dare!" she shouted. "Don't dare come with excuses."  
"I don't have any excuses," he said, shrugging.  
"There were children in there, Val! _Children!_"  
"I never said I was good!"  
Now he was on his feet, starting to sound just as angry as she was.  
"Helena was right," Beatrix sobbed, her anger turning into tears. "You are my snake!"  
"What is this about a snake!" the rogue shouted. "You are all crazy!"  
"At first the snake is nice and cute and it likes to eat from your hand, but then eventually it turns on you and tries to eat you!"  
He stared at her and she turned her head away, embarrassed to be crying.  
"You knew what I was, and you saved me," he said, voice as cold as his skin all of a sudden. "You knew I had killed people, it was your decision. I never gave the impression I was good."  
Beatrix could not look at him, she knew he was right, but she had really, really wanted him to be good.  
"I just thought… You did not kill me! And I don't know why!"  
The rogue turned around and leaned against the tree he had been sitting under. He fumbled as he found the cigarettes in his pocket and placed one between his lips.  
"Why didn't you kill me?"  
"Shut up," was all he said.  
She was in the saddle, riding away before she even realised she was doing it.  
"I hate you," she yelled over her shoulder, knowing how hopelessly cliché it was, but it was the only words that she could manage to find at the moment.

*********************************************

Lost in time I can't count the words  
I said when I thought they went unheard  
All of those harsh thoughts so unkind  
'cos I wanted you

And now I sit here I'm all alone  
So here sits a bloody mess, tears fly home  
A circle of angels, deep in war  
'cos I wanted you

Weak as I am, no tears for you  
Weak as I am, no tears for you  
Deep as I am, I'm no one's fool  
Weak as I am

So what am I now? I'm love last home  
I'm all of the soft words I once owned  
If I opened my heart, there'd be no space for air  
'cos I wanted you

Weak as I am, no tears for you  
Weak as I am, no tears for you  
Deep as I am, I'm no ones fool  
Weak as I am

In this tainted soul  
In this weak young heart  
Am I too much for you?

Weak as I am  
Am I to much for you?  
Weak as I am  
Am I to much for you?  
Weak as I am

******************************

**It's Bony, nothing bad could happen to him.... could it?? .... could it?**  
****

Lyrics are "Weak" by Skunk Anansie.


	8. Losing things

Beatrix was galloping along the road, until the tears stopped. Then she reined the mare and continued at a trot. The night had fallen over the forest and the stars had come out. When the moon looked through the leaves it told her it was around midnight.  
"What am I doing?" she asked the brown mare when the horse stopped to grass as it felt the pressure on the reins go away. "Does it matter?"  
She put her head in her hands and tried to clear her mind from the haze of fury she had been in.  
_What was she doing? Hadn't she known, deep down, that they were very, very different. What did she expect? She had wanted to save him, turn him, give him a way back into the light. _  
"What does it matter?" she asked the horse again.  
She had helped him out of prison because she felt sorry for him, and because she owed him for saving her life. But what about the time on the roof? Why had she stitched up his face earlier? Out of sympathy or because of their friendship? Because, what had he said? He was starting to appreciate…  
"I just left him in the middle of Alliance territory," she said, turning the horse around and persuading it to run a little.

It was after dawn when she reached the tree where she had left him. She had ridden so fast away from him the horse was exhausted, and she continued on foot, leading the poor animal by the reins beside her.  
Beatrix didn't know what kept her going, she had not eaten for a long time, and there had been little sleep the last days. It was as if she had an internal motor that just went and went and wouldn't stop until she had righted the wrongs she had done.  
There was no trace of the rogue by the tree other than a halfsmoked cigarette which had been discarded in the grass, and for a moment Beatrix felt how hopeless it all was. The horse was grassing peacefully beside her, relaxing and doing what it was best at.  
"Do what you know," Beatrix told herself. "Do what you're good at…"  
She put her hands on the tree and slowly knelt down on the ground.  
_Let the light lead you_, she told herself. _Find the strength in yourself and let the light lead you_.  
She knelt under the tree for the better part of an hour, and when she finally got back up, rubbing the blood back into her legs, her eyes were filled with determination.  
"Come, girl." She whistled for the horse, who raised her head and walked dutifully over to the girl, because even the mare understood the tone of Beatrix voice.  
Beatrix turned the horse away from the road and after a while they hit a small path winding away between trees and bushes. Every time the path split, Beatrix closed her eyes and let the light inside her show her which way to take.

By dinnertime she found the arm.  
It hadn't been that much of a deal if it was just an arm, but this arm also had a hand, and on the hand there was three fingers with skin on them, and two bony ones. In some bushes a few meters away there was a black glove.  
Now Beatrix urged the horse to run. Her mind was cold and straight as an arrow.  
_Follow the light._  
There was a trail on the path before her, as if something had been dragged.  
_Valante._  
With one hand on the reins and one over her heart she rode, faster and faster until she could see something in the distance. The horse reared and neighed nervously, but Beatrix squeezed at the mare's flanks with her legs and drove her onwards.  
As she reached the body dangling over the path from a branch, she barely dared breathe. There was a rope around both his legs and the left one dangled in solitude. The sight of the empty leg of the trousers and the torn off sleeve where his right arm should be was both hilarious and at the same time horrible.  
"I though you hated me." His voice was weak, and the glow from his eyes not as brilliant as it used to be.  
"I cooled down a bit," she said. "And it softens my heart to see you hanging there, looking so pathetic."  
"Rub it in, why don't you."  
She rode over to him and managed to stand up, balancing on the saddle.  
"I don't know how to get you down," she told him apologetic.  
"Just cut the rope. The fall won't kill me."  
She did as he said and flinched as she heard the sound as he hit the ground. Then she cut the rope around the left leg too, and it fell to land on top of him. If the situation weren't so serious, she would have laughed at the sight.  
Beatrix dismounted and knelt beside him, lifting him with an arm beneath his shoulders.  
"For the record," he whispered. "I wasn't the one who lit the fire. I wasn't even near the orphanage. I just kill people. I don't _massacre_."  
"Don't worry about it, Val. I should not have left you."  
She was glad to see they had not taken his mask of. If they had ripped up the stitches again she would have been really annoyed.  
"Let's get you off the path and somewhere safer," she smiled encouraging, lifting him up in her arms.  
She knew he was light, but it amazed her how little he actually weighted. It was like lifting a child, but even so she struggled a bit to get him into the saddle. When she finally got him up she had to help him find his balance, due to the lack of half a leg and the arm.  
"Leg," he croaked, pointing at the road with the stump of his left arm. "Need leg."  
She got the leg, swallowing hard as she picked up the dead and fleshless thing. Here and there the bone was turning brown and brittle.  
As she carefully got in the saddle behind him, he fell back against her body. Beatrix felt like holding a corpse, which weren't too far from the truth, but it really felt like all life had left the scrawny body.  
She steered the horse off the path and into the forest. They needed to get as far away as they could, and fast, in case the people who had hung him in the tree returned to finish him off. Her heart was aching with guilt and concern, for he was lying still against her shoulder, not making a sound.  
"Stupid humans," he whispered after a while. "Stupid lumberjacks with their shiny axes and strong arms and stupid humour."  
Beatrix did not know what to say, so she only tightened her grip around his body, pulling him closer to her.  
When she felt they were far enough from the road she stopped the horse and found them shelter by a stone surrounded by trees. She got the saddle and bridle of the horse and let it grass while she tried to care for the rogue. After she had given him a drink of water he begged for a cigarette, but she turned him down.  
"Shall I try to reattach your leg?" she asked, wondering if he had some glue hidden away.  
"Just tie it on," he told her. "The magic will attach it after a while."  
Beatrix tried to put the kneejoint back together, fumbling a little. While she was working on the leg, Valante mumbled weakly, obviously feeling much discouraged.  
"I miss my arm. That was a good arm. It was my own."  
"We'll fix it," Beatrix tried to encourage him.  
"I'll need to get to Undercity," he continued, ignoring her words, or too far inside his own world to listen. "I'll need to get one of the necromancers to help me get a new one. How will I get to Undercity? Without arms?"  
"They can do that?" she was surprised by the possibilities of dark magic. "Then you can get a left arm."  
"I have a left arm!" he almost shouted. "I like my left arm!"  
They were both quiet while Beatrix tied the leg back on with the help of the lucky wire.  
"Bee?" he whispered eventually. His speech was slurred and his face was emotionless, as if the magic was too weak to move dead muscles anymore. "I need a favour."  
"What?"  
"You said, last time… anything… anything, you… for me."  
"Yes?"  
"I," she found it difficult to understand him now, his lips were barely moving. "If you… there's no point anymore."  
"What? What is no point anymore?"  
"I need a favour, Bee," he was begging now, and just the tone of his voice filled her eyes with tears. "If you… just take a rock."  
"What do I need a rock for?" she asked suspiciously.  
"Anything for me, you say. I need you to… crush my head."  
She couldn't speak and put both hands over her mouth to stop herself from screaming. Before he could say anything she picked up his body and clutched him to her chest.  
"I don't want this any more," he mumbled as his face was pressed into her soft golden hair and pale neck. "Life isn't good when you're dead."  
After a while her shivering body and quiet sobs got through to him and made him realises there wasn't much chance of her ending his miserable life just now.  
"You don't have to cry. It's not anything to cry about," he tried telling her. "And you don't have to hold me like a child..."  
"It comforts me," she sobbed, crushing him even more. "And you have no arms to escape with, so you'll just have to stand it."  
He didn't have the courage to tell her that if he had arms he would not have used them to escape, instead he enjoyed the embrace, feeling like he was betraying himself while doing so.  
When she managed to stop crying, Beatrix realised that Valante was actually leaning his body against hers, and that scared her enough to let go of him. She helped him sit against the stone again and dried her eyes.  
"Maybe we should get your arm back on too," she sniffed.  
"You have my arm?" He sounded like he just had been told he had won a rather large prize.  
"I might have found it along the path, yes..."  
"Are you _made_ of evil, woman? Here I am begging you to kill me because a life without arms would mean a slow and rather unpleasant death, and you _have my arm_?"  
He didn't sound angry, just mildly frustrated and rather shocked.  
"It was just lying there," she explained.  
"But you did not tell me! And I though _I_ was evil!"  
Beatrix frowned and unwrapped the arm from the cloth she carefully had packed around it.  
"Hey, I'm not the one without arms here," she told him. "Because if I were I would happen to be very nice to the person who actually had my arm. Besides; maybe I wanted to teach you a lesson."  
"What kind of lesson? The one about you being pure evil hidden in all that cuteness?"  
Beatrix began wrapping the arm in the cloth again.  
"If that's the way..."  
"No! Need arm!" He almost whined.  
"You have to tell me something first," she told him.  
"What?"  
"Why didn't you kill me?"  
"You mean you don't know?"  
"No, I have a lot of theories, but I don't know why."  
"Why do you think?" He was watching her curiously, and she decided to humour him.  
"Maybe I look like someone you once knew. Maybe I remind you of your mother or sister or something..."  
He suddenly found the strength to laugh, something that annoyed her.  
"That's not why!"  
"Then tell me, or you'll have to elbow me to death to get your arm!"  
He was considering this, she could tell by the way his eyes narrowed.  
"Okey, I'll tell you."  
"Thank you."  
He seemed tired again and rested his head against the stone behind him.  
"I didn't kill you... because you are alive."  
"So are all the people you kill, right up until the moment they meet you."  
"Yes, but you are _alive_. It shines. Your eyes, your words, the way you move, your body," This made Beatrix blush. "You are so alive. Like more alive than I am dead. Killing you would have been like killing the idea of life itself, and I cannot do that. I used to love life, it's not life's fault it did not love me back."  
There was a tender look in her eyes as she moved to his side and started trying to get the shoulder joint to fit together.  
"So you won't be wanting to die once we get this arm back on?" she asked him.  
"No. I might smack you for teaching me that lesson though..."  
She stopped what she was doing and looked at him, raising an eyebrow.  
"Just kidding," he grinned. "Get my arm on, I need a cigarette!"

*************************

3pm.  
Blue as a road sign,  
With a gag and some cheap wine  
Sun's in my eyes between  
The smoke trails of aircraft,  
The kite tails and light shafts

There's a language in the sky

There are bones  
Hiding under the viaduct  
Sweeping down by the railway line  
Making wagers with the day  
There's a rumour  
Dirty as a chimneystack  
Quiet as roadkill  
On the northbound carriageway

And who's gonna raise a hand  
When all we were taught to do is dance  
Who'll be able to stand after this avalanche

Well, they sold you  
Back your outrage  
In a neat little shrink wrap  
And a beautiful face and you think  
You've found your purpose  
Well, they've been trailing the breadcrumbs  
Of a water-tight case  
So you're shouting  
You're shouting softly  
So no one can hear you  
And get the wrong idea  
But behind  
The closing eye of the tabloids  
We will be waiting  
And we'll say it clearly

'Cos who's gonna raise a hand  
When all we were taught to do is dance  
Who'll be able to stand after this avalanche

3pm.  
Blue as a road sign,  
With a gag and some cheap wine  
Sun's in my eyes between  
The smoke trails of aircraft,  
The kite tails and light shafts  
There's a language in the sky

There's a language in the sky

There's a language in the sky

***********************************

**So. It turned out alright in the end (because I am a soppy little author and loves my characters and want them to find L.O.V.E.)**

But, pause for a moment and imagine Valante dangling from that tree... no arms, one leg, flailing with the stump of the left arm...... Now: Laugh

I know I did.

And the song is "Avalanche" by Thea Gilmore. I listened to it while writing and it's beautiful.

_There's a language in the sky_


	9. Letters

**First let me appologise for spamming you all with chapters today! I begin work tomorrow and won't have time to upload much in a while, so I just wanted to finish this story so you won't have to wait a year for me to get it published here. **

_Dear Bony.  
I do not know if this letter has any chance of reaching you, but I'm giving it a try. As you probably are aware of, the new truce between our factions opens new opportunities for friendships. I believe it will surprise you that just two weeks ago I was visiting Tarren Mill in Hillsbrad, and I found the forsaken I met there pleasant, although reserved and very suspicious towards me and my party, but one can not expect anything else.  
I still remember the day we said goodbye like it happened yesterday. I can almost still hear your voice as you complained about all the sun in Redridge.  
How is your leg? And the arm? I was so scared the first week after riding back, whether or not the arm would stay on, but in the end I overcame my worries with the thought that if it did not you had promised me to teach yourself to elbow people to death.  
In the last year I have learnt a lot, especially to protect myself. You should only see what I can do with a staff! I have been travelling around the world, making a living by teaming up with people who need healers. I have also gotten a good reputation for being better than most to spot stealthed rogues, all thanks to you.  
If this letter indeed does meet you somewhere along your travels, I am sure you are wondering why I am writing. The reason is; I have often thought about you. You were a colourful addition to my otherwise dreary life, and I have wondered if you are well or not.  
I would be very happy to have words from you, but I will understand any way. I wish you are well, and please care for yourself._

_-Beatrix Sasin, Street of gods, Stormwind city_

_Ps. Don't smoke too much!  
_

It took two months before one day there was a crinkled letter in her mailbox. She had just returned from a escort-mission, and wanted a shower and her bed more than anything. At least more than anything before she found the letter.  
Running up the stairs to her lodgings she stumbled and almost fell, and did not draw breath before she was inside by the kitchen table. With hands trembling she carefully ripped the top of the dirty envelope and pulled out a sheet of paper, this too a rather dirty brown colour, as if he had written on the first thing he found.

_Bee.  
Booty Bay. The second week in the seventh month. I will be waiting.  
-Bony_

It was the best letter in the universe and it made her dance through the apartment, sing as she got in the bath and giggle to her blushing image in the mirror.

********************************************

Where have all the good men gone and where are all the Gods?  
Where's the street wise Hercules to fight the rising odds?  
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?  
Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream of what I need

I need a hero  
I'm holding out for a hero till the end of the night  
he's gotta be strong and he's gotta be fast  
and he's gotta be fresh from the fight

Somewhere after midnight  
In my wildest fantasy  
Somewhere just beyond my reach  
There's someone reaching back for me  
Racing on the thunder and rising with the heat  
It's gonna take a Superman to sweep me off my feet

Up where the mountains meet the heavens above,  
Out where the lightning splits the sea  
I would swear that there's someone somewhere watching me  
Through the wind and the chill and the rain  
and the storm and the flood  
I can feel his approach like the fire in my blood  
Like the fire in my blood

I need a hero  
I'm holding out for a hero till the end of the night  
he's gotta be strong and he's gotta be fast  
and gotta be fresh from the fight  
I need a hero  
I'm holding out for a hero till the morning light  
He's gotta be sure and he's gotta be soon  
And he's gotta be larger than life

**************************************

**Thanks for reading**

**  
The song is "Holding out for a HERO" with Jennifer Saunders from the Shrek soundtrack.  
Just because THAT is how Bee felt when she went to have that shower. If she knew that song she would have been singing it!**


	10. Booty Bay

As the new boat going from Stormwind to Booty Bay sailed into the southernmost harbour three days later, Beatrix, Bunny and Tawnee stood on the bow, watching the pier excitedly. Beatrix had insisted she'd come alone, but then the girls had complained that she had already seen so much of the world, while they did not often find a good excuse to leave Stormwind. Bunny's fiancé and Tawnee's boyfriend had also tagged along, not sure how to handle the fact that the three girls were travelling anywhere to meet up with an old friend who happened to be an undead rogue that went by the name Bony.  
While they searched for the rogue among the many buildings of the harbour, Bunny and Tawnee used the opportunity to explore the Bay's shops, but Beatrix was way too nervous to even think about shopping. On several occasions there were undead people passing by her, and she turned and smiled, only to find it was the wrong kind of face that looked at her in distrust.  
It was rather late in the evening when they reached the harbour so they decided to stay at the inn to wait for the boat that was going back to Stormwind the next day.  
Beatrix was feeling down since she had yet to find the rogue, and the others tried to cheer her up.  
"He might not be here yet," Dan, Bunny's fiancé, told her.  
"He should have been here since yesterday," Beatrix sulked. "And if he says he's gonna be here, then he won't let anything keep him."  
"But it's a big harbour, and we haven't been through it all," Dan continued as they walked to the inn.  
Dusk was falling and the multitude of lanterns which kept the Bay active even at night were being lit.  
As they reached the inn Beatrix stopped and sniffed the air curiously.  
"That smell!" She looked around her and tried to follow her nose. "I know that smell."  
"Oh, shut up! I don't smell that bad."  
Turning towards the voice, Beatrix grinned happily as she spotted two bright, shining eyes within the hood of a cloak. There was a flash of ember glow as a cigarette was discarded on the ground and stepped on by a soft leather boot.  
"Val!" Beatrix was surprised to find herself hugging the rogue.  
She had imagined this moment many times in her mind, but it had never really included any hugging.  
"Bee, I have some broken ribs," he complained. "Don't break them more."  
When she let him go she cleared her throat embarrassed and turned to introduce her friends.

Ten minutes later they were ordering dinner from a lady in the inn. Beatrix tried looking into the blackness of the rogue's hood, but he was trying to be a hermit crab, hiding inside his hole.  
"Can I not see your face today?" she asked him, nudging him with an elbow and remembering the broken ribs just a moment to late.  
He didn't seem to notice the pain, if there was any, but shook his head.  
"No. You'd be sad to see how I've deteriorated," he told her, blunt as always.  
"I thought you weren't vain," she teased, but it failed to provoke him.  
When their food arrived, Bunny had to ask:  
"Don't you want to eat, Bony? I know you can, because you ate your biscuit!"  
He answered by stabbing a small piece of meat on Beatrix' plate with one of his many knives and chewed it in silence while the rest enjoyed their meal and talked. After the food he touched Beatrix' arm and leaned against her to whisper:  
"I need a smoke. And I know the perfect rooftop."  
As he stood up, so did she, following him outside after explaining to her friends.  
Valante offered to help her up onto the roof and looked surprised at while she levitated up on her own.  
"You've certainly gotten some new skills," he laughed, climbing up after her.  
She was impressed by the agility and speed with which he climbed, even with only one arm.  
The rooftop really was perfect. There were chimneys to sit between, sheltered from wind and curious eyes.  
A match flared in the darkness and lit the tip of a cigarette that was sticking out from his hood.  
"Enough of this silliness," Beatrix told him, pulling the hood back.  
He had the mask down, and at first she could not see any change in his face, but when she looked closer the skin seemed more worn, the nose thinner, the eyes more sunken. The hand holding the cigarette had changed too, now the index finger was also without skin.  
He cringed as she grabbed his collar, smiling when she found what she was looking for.  
"You still have the lucky wire!"  
"Yeah," he smiled, and she noticed there were two stitches in his cheek that had opened when the thread rotted away. "No more yellow ribbons for my leg now I have my lucky wire."  
"And you still smoke like you life depended on it," she giggled, pulling up her legs and putting her arms around the knees.  
"It does!"  
"No, Val, that's just a bad excuse."  
"Nope. Smoked meat lasts longer."  
This made her shake with laughter and he watched thoughtfully how her shiny eyes reflected the moonlight and the sea, while he took deep drags of the cigarette.  
"You still have no filthy habits?" he grinned. "You don't smoke, don't drink, don't swear, don't speak bad about people, you don't... do nothing wrong."  
"Yes, I do!" she was almost insulted. "I'll have you know, mister Bony, that once I sprung an enemy from jail and hid him in my room!"  
Now he laughed, and she could not remember the last time she had felt so happy.  
"When we're together we laugh a lot," she smiled, looking out across the Bay.  
"Yeah, it's on accord of me being naturally cheerful and it rubs off on you..."  
She laughed again, realising how she had missed these little moments.  
"So... your friends seem nice." He fumbled the cigarette and had to pick it up before it set fire to the thatched roof.  
Beatrix watched him trying to save the remnants of it, swear and then light a new one.  
"They are." She hesitated. "You do remember Bunny and Tawnee, don't you?"  
"Sure, how could anyone forget them? I was referring to the other friends."  
"Aha. The _male_ ones."  
"As it were, yes."  
"Dan is Bunny's fiancé, and Petar is Tawnee's boyfriend," she said, watching hard for any sign of emotion in his face.  
"Aha," he said, still focusing immensely on the cigarette. "And you left _yours_ at home?"  
"No." She had to stop herself from laughing when she realised he really was fishing for information. "No, I don't have a boyfriend."  
"Whatever happened to the paladin you were in love with back then?"  
"How do you know that?"  
"Bunny."  
He didn't need to say more, Beatrix knew how Bunny was. If there was something you would like the whole world to know you could just tell Bunny, and in two days work she would have gotten the information halfway to outland.  
"It didn't work out," she said, glad the dark was hiding her reddening cheeks.  
"Aha. Why?"  
"Well, I tried. I really tried, but he just weren't... for me. He was pretty, sure enough, and strong. I even took him to the sanctuary, on the roof, and he just told me he didn't like it. _I'm sure if you like hiding on a rooftop it's **the** place to be, but there's really not much here, is there?_" She made her voice dark and caused him to snigger at the impersonation. "And I've really tried you know... With him, and with the other guys. It seems it was not hard to get a boyfriend, the challenge was finding one I would keep. I want to travel, I want to see things, not sit at home like a good wife and wait for news from the front."  
He snorted, and she decided it meant he agreed.  
"Besides," she said, trying to sound as casual as possible. "None of them made me laugh."  
She looked at him and got a rather awkward look back. They both knew they had come to a point they were both dreading.  
"You see, Val. None of them were..."  
His hand shut her mouth and she shivered by the touch of his skinless fingers.  
"Don't. Please," he really was begging. "Once you would not kill me with a rock, do not kill me with this... Let's just talk about easier things, things that _can_ be."  
"None of them were you," she said, determined to end what she had begun.  
"Bee, don't do this." He waved a hand at her when she opened her mouth to protest. "No, listen. If I was alive things would have been different. I could have been what you needed. I would have loved you with every nerve in my body. And don't look at me that way, or I'll stop and not talk again."  
She closed her eyes, because after what he just had said it was very hard not to look at him _that way_.  
"I don't know how or why you have gotten it into your heart, but don't waste your feelings this way. We both know what I am. Just look at me. This filthy, dying body, void of feeling, void of love..."  
She touched the soft, smooth skin around the scar on his cheek.  
"Then why are you shivering from my touch?" she asked cleverly.  
He hid his face in his hand, almost scorching his hair with the cigarette, and she could see there was pain in the glittering eyes.  
"Do you have any idea what you're asking of me?"  
"As far as I know I haven't asked anything of you. Yet," she added when he looked at her again.  
"I don't know how many years there are left," he shrugged. "I don't know how long I'll look somewhat human. I have nothing to give."  
"Good. Because I'm not asking for anything."  
He got to his feet and stood with his back towards her, she guessed he was trying to build up again the walls she had delicately brought down.  
"You are not making any sense," he told her.  
And then her hands were touching the dirty locks of old, dead hair. He could feel her leaning against him.  
Beatrix just stood there, not knowing how to say everything she felt, but she knew she was just as scared as him.  
He smelled. Worse than she remembered. There was a small hole in the skin at the back of his head, showing her the skull beneath. She found it repulsive. She found him repulsive and the way her heart beat for him terrified her.  
"The problem," she began, trying to form her words around a thought that was escaping her. "The problem is that I didn't fall in love with your dead body, but I fell in love with your very much alive soul."  
She slipped a hand around his chest and placed it where she would normally have found a heartbeat. To her surprise he took it and held it tightly.  
"I know you'll fade away, but at this point in my life the only thing I want to do is spend my days listening to your complaining and watching you blow smokerings."  
"You are absolutely sure?"  
"Yes."  
"Then don't expect anything," he said, sitting down again and tried to get a new cigarette out of the box.  
She pulled one out for him and placed it between his bloodless lips. As a reward he stroked a lock of her golden hair between his fingers.  
"It's a waste," he told her. "That something so beautiful should wither by my touch."  
"Oh, shut up," she grinned, lighting a match for him.

*************************************

Well I stepped into an avalanche,  
It covered up my soul  
The cripple here that you clothe and feed  
Is neither starved nor cold  
He does not ask for your company,  
Not at the centre, the centre of the world.

You who wish to conquer pain,  
You must learn what makes me kind  
The crumbs of love that you offer me,  
They're the crumbs I've left behind.  
Your pain is no credential here,  
It's just the shadow, shadow of my wound.

I have begun to long for you,  
_I who have no greed_  
I have begun to ask for you,  
_I who have no need._  
You say you've gone away from me,  
_But I can feel you when you breathe._

Do not dress in those rags for me,  
I know you are not poor;  
You don't love me quite so fiercely now  
When you know that you are not sure,  
It is your turn, beloved,  
It is your flesh that I wear

***************************************

**I hope you liked it :) From here on there will be some episodes.**

I don't know if anyone reads the lyrics (I am just trying to spread some music into the world ) But if you are gonna read just one song, then read this one.  
"Avalanche" by Leonard Cohen (I grew up with this song, and love it) I have shortened it down to the bare essentials, because it is long. But I kept the parts that I think could fit the story.


	11. Rags and bones

The little priestess, Beatrix Sasin, was the first living human to be allowed to enter the Undercity since the fragile truce between Horde and Alliance had been established.  
The demons of the legion were still trying to invade Azeroth, and as long as they would continue to do so, it meant a simpler life for the rogue and his companion.  
He had even gone before the Banshee queen to ask for the permission to bring Beatrix into the city where he had started his life for the second time. Sylvanas had requested to see this girl who spent her life caring for one of the forsaken ones, obviously intrigued by the idea.  
Valante took Beatrix' hand and held it tightly as they entered the old, crumbling city. She looked around her, eyes big and curious, while he scoured the shadows for movement or indication of danger.  
"Relax, Val," she told him, squeezing his hand. "The queen has given me permission to be here, and I doubt anyone will go against her will."  
"I wish you had not talked me into this," he mumbled, pulling at his hood until it shrouded his face in shadows. "I don't like the feeling of it."  
"But you have seen my city," she reminded him. "I want to see yours. And you know you cannot resist me when I want something."  
There was a snort from inside the hood, and Beatrix knew he was frowning although she could not see it. It was true, the rogue could not deny her anything if she nagged him long enough.  
"I'm just saying it makes my skin crawl," he whispered as they reached the pair of undead abominations guarding the upper entrance to Undercity's elevators.  
"Where does it crawl to?" she giggled back, smiling to the rather frightening creatures who smiled back with their misshapen faces.

There was an honorary guard waiting where the elevator came to a halt. Valante spoke to the guards and soon they were being led into the heart of the city, a large circular room lined with staircases and walkways, where hundreds of Forsaken were going about their daily business.  
Valante watched the priestess as she smiled and nodded at people whom she never had met and who sent her looks of pure hatred. He squeezed her hand hard, because otherwise his instincts would have taken over and he would have drawn a knife.  
The looks from his people bore into his back, into his head, and made him cower by the feeling of betraying them. He could feel them hating her for the same reason that he found himself unable to hurt her. Her mere existence was mocking them, because she was so alive, so incredible alive that it made them even more dead.  
Beatrix stopped as she noticed how he was dragging his left leg more than usual and how his back was slightly crouched, as if he was a metal coil ready to leap.  
"Bony?" she whispered, worry written in her pretty features. "Are you okey?"  
The guards stopped and looked annoyed because of this pause, but Beatrix raised her hand to tell them she needed a moment.  
"No, I'm not okey." His voice was barely a hiss. "I feel horrible."  
There was only one woman in the entire world who could have done what Beatrix did next and accomplished the same result. Luckily, that woman was her.  
She put one arm around the rogue's trembling shoulders, sheltering him from the eyes with her body and robes. With the other hand she pulled his hood off, and stroked his hair lovingly.  
"Don't worry, love. I'm sorry about talking you into this, I did not know how hard it would be for you."  
And while they were standing there on one of the staircases in the middle of the circular room, hundreds of pair of eyes upon them, she carefully kissed his head. The whispering and general murmur of the crowd died away for just a moment, but the spell had been cast.  
A hundred rotten hearts felt like beating again, a hundred dying souls did for a single moment live in the shock of such tenderness, in a hundred minds the darkness was for no more than the blink of an eye driven away by the holy light in the priestess soul.  
Valante looked around him, eyes daring anyone to look at him with hatred now he had found his strength again, but this time nobody met his gaze. As he nodded to Beatrix the guards continued to lead them toward the chamber where they would meet the queen of the Forsaken.

"She was awfully nice!" Beatrix exclaimed as she and the rogue were leaving the throne room. "And really pretty too."  
Valante had to admit he had been very surprised at the kindness and hospitality the queen had shown his friend. Word of what had happened earlier had obviously reached her ear before the two arrived, and she had whispered in the rogue's ear as they left:  
"Protect her with everything you are. There are not many people as lucky as you in this world. To have someone to fill their lives with meaning like she fills yours is the most precious gift. To her, you are alive, not just some reanimated creature made out of rags and bones. Protect her with all that you are."

Now he watched her as she curiously knocked on the coffin where he used to sleep when he was in the city.  
"Don't you think it's rather stigmatizing to sleep in a coffin just because you're dead?" she asked him, trying to pry open the lid of the coffin.  
"How else would you stack a million undead people inside this city?" His mood had improved much now they were out of the trade-quarters. "And don't do that," he told her as she knocked and scratched on his coffin. "You are gonna disturb Rags."  
"Rags? You mean there's someone in there?" She sounded mortified. "Is it kind of... renting your room out when you're not using it?"  
He sighed, knowing he never should have mentioned it, and released the hinges that kept the lid in place.  
"Hello, Rags," he said into the coffin. "There's someone who wants to play with you, and I bet she can match your stamina."  
Two small, shining eyes opened and there was a creaking sound as if something stretched.  
"Mrrraoowww?" Rags asked.

************************************

Through the iron winter to the fires of June  
Through the five o'clock skyline to the deadlocked moon  
There's a flickering figure dancing alone  
Making her junk creatures out of rags and bones

Where the vapour is rising between the seedling and the vine  
And though the shadow's in waiting are wasting their time  
Cos my veins are tracking street maps and the compass and the stones  
And I'm still making my junk creatures out of rags and bones

Oh yeah, the hammer and the nail  
Oh yeah, the heart's in the small change  
Oh yeah, and the Devil's in the detail  
And in my rags and bones

Now it's the fist through the window, it's the wine that you brought  
It's a far cry from the shackles of cognitive thought  
It's the lines on the fridge door, just see how they've grown  
Up from little junk creatures made from rags and bones

And now the candle's flickered out, the walls have been built  
And they are racking up the weapons of blood and piss and guilt  
Voices have been silenced, but they belong to anyone  
And these little junk creatures made from rags and bones  
And these little junk creatures made from rags and bones

*****************************************

**Just an episode from their life. Bee decided she wanted to see Undercity, and who can deny that girl?**

If you read the lyrics, think of Sylvanas and the undead army. I have always thought of the Forsaken when I heard that song. Thea Gilmore's "Rags and Bones"


	12. Smiting demons

There were demon hunters gathering in the courtyard of Nethergarde Keep. Paladins were mounting their white horses while being eyeballed by the warriors, who were much grubbier, more scarred and definitely less shiny.  
There were young women sighing, sobbing and swooning, because for some reason or other you always get them where an army is assembling.  
The hunters were readying bow and guns, checking ammunition and feeding their pets, because you never knew when that last meal would come. There were priests and druids and warlocks and mages, all mixed together, apart from the warlocks, who had been treated with suspicion since an incidence some days ago when someone had found evidence of legion spies inside the keep, and who better to blame than those who fought with demons by their side.  
And in the middle of it all a young priestess was walking towards the officers who were leading the assault. There was something odd about her, the spring in her step, the smile in her eyes, and above all; the scruffiest cat in the universe that was peacefully purring in her arms. In front of her and behind her the crowd parted, making a path for her to walk through.  
"I'd like to sign up, sir," she told an officer who was holding a clipboard with a list on it.  
"I think we have a lot of priests already," the answer came, as the officer's eyes were inadvertently drawn to the thing in the woman's arms. "What is that?"  
"This is Rags, sir," she was still smiling, it seemed to the officer that no one should smile that careless while holding something looking like a piece of used toilet paper. "He is my cat, sir."  
The officer wondered if the woman might be crazy, and turned to one of his superior officers, eyes begging for help.  
"He looks like he's been a little ill," one of the majors said, trying to smile. "I think maybe, my girl, that you should take him to a doctor. We have several experts..."  
His voice trailed off as the cat opened its yellow, gleaming eyes and fixed them on him while stretching its bony frame. Then the creature climbed onto the woman's shoulder and started washing paws that were nothing but bone and claw with a tongue black as soot.  
"You see," the major said, very slowly and without taking his eyes of the cat. "We are overbooked on healers, and we cannot spend more people on protecting them, so I don't think we have any room for you, girl."  
His increasingly strained, but still friendly smile was mirrored by the woman's happy little grin.  
"Well, sir. I am glad to be telling you that I in fact come with protection, so I do not need anyone."  
Now the major was getting nervous by the smile. He was in the middle of arranging troops for a big assault on the enemy, and although he did need people, he did not have the nerves for being smiled at in this manner by a small girl and a very, very sick cat.  
"I see no protection," he almost barked.  
The woman looked around her.  
"Now where has he gone off to?" She craned her neck as if to look for someone, and just as the major was about to ask someone to remove this girl from him and get her far, far away, there was something tickling his ear, like a fly.  
"Right here," a hoarse voice said, close enough for him to feel the breath on his neck. "I'm right here."  
He turned his head just to find himself looking into the two narrow, glittering eyes of an undead. The rogue disappeared and came into sight again beside the girl.  
"There you are, Bony," she smiled. "I was just telling this nice officer how I don't need any protection, because I have you and Rags, and we want to fight the demons."  
The major never knew what happened next. He later thought that he must have said something, or done something, because the next thing he knew there were two new recruits in the army, three if you counted the cat.

And after the battle, after the haziness of blood had left him, as he walked through the battlefield where dead bodies were being carried away and dead demons were being burned, one of his sergeants came up beside him.  
"I have never seen nothing like it, sir," the man croaked.  
"Like what, Tarry?"  
"You know those, those people you took in..." Sergeant Tarry stared into the distance, and the major realised he probably knew which people they were talking about.  
"Well, what about them, man?"  
"I have never seen anything like it. That undead. He was _everywhere_. Just one arm and still he killed more than his share. And the girl, she was just smiling. And then there was the cat..."  
"You are not gonna tell me the cat killed anyone?"  
"Well, sir... I did not see it myself, but Jones told me Freddy saw it tear a hellhound to pieces, and I _did_ see it chase four of the beasts, and they were running for their lives. Kenth told me the rogue even lost one leg at one point, but frankly, sir, I find that highly unlikely. And I did see him having two legs later..."  
Their conversation trailed off as they suddenly found themselves passing the trio who were the objects of their wonder.  
The rogue was sitting on the ground, naked from the waist up, while the woman was stitching his skin together were it had been cut over his ribs. It was quite a sight. While he was being sewn the undead was happily smoking a cigarette, and every time he opened his mouth to exhale some of the smoke escaped through a hole in his cheek.  
"Oh, Bony," the woman complained. "You've torn your cheek again."  
"Sovvy, Bee," the rogue mumbled while inhaling deeply.  
The cat, which still made the officers rather nervous, was curled up in his lap, and as the two men watched both cat and rogue turned their gleaming eyes to look at them.  
"Oh, hello, sirs," the woman smiled without turning around. "Did we do okey, do you think?"  
Turning to the rogue again she patted his head and said:  
"Sweety, is the leg properly attached yet?"  
"I think, on the whole, you did very well... all things considering," was all the major could manage to say, before he and the sergeant hurried away, leaving the strange trio behind, but the sound of laughter followed them quite a way.

*****************************************

And since I couldn't find any music for this chapter today, I am giving you the lyrics that gave birth to Valante. It's his theme-song, as it were:

I am walking in the last rays of the setting sun  
whistling a hangman's tune with head held high, swinging my gun  
I say this little boy is angry  
I say this little boy is mad  
This little boy comes to destroy, stone eyed, hard faced,  
in swathes of vengeance clad

And the black cock crows  
and a dead wind blows

In my wake are seven women who tried to steal my soul  
In my belly six wild wolves curse and howl from their foul hole  
I say no earthly will may stop me  
I say no earthly will may try  
No earthly will may halt the spill of blood from wounds and tears from grieving eyes

And the black cock crows  
and a dead wind blows

Below me burn the city lights like fires of pearls and jewels  
I'm climbing down the city walls, unseen, unfussed - the sentries must be fools  
I say all pleasantries are over  
I say all pleasantries are past  
My enemies; you pimps and thieves, prepare to meet your nemesis at last!

******************************

**Another funny little thing I wrote about the strange little couple.**

Song is "Malediction" by Waterboys, and I owe that song something for creating Val in my mind.


	13. Soggy and clean

**Warning! This is JUST silly!**

Beatrix rubbed her face with her sleeve, making the cloth red. The dry dust from red clay had covered her skin and clothes until she felt like she was a walking statue.  
When she saw the Alliance town she nudged the rogue behind her and pointed.  
"You know what I want now?"  
"Yes, a hot meal and a bath."  
She laughed delighted.  
"How did you know?"  
"Because, Bee, that's what you always want when we find a city."  
"Well, maybe you should have a bath too this time," she told him, scratching Rags behind where the cat's ears would have been. "You are red with dust."  
There was an unhappy snort from behind her.  
"I don't like water, you know that. It makes me soggy. And you just want me to stop smelling."  
"No," she argued. "I don't want you to stop smelling. I am used to your smell, it has been a good friend of me for quite some time."  
She winched as sharp fingers tried to tickle her side and added:  
"Besides, we are quite wealthy and could get a room with a fireplace and be lazy in front of it until we dry."  
"I dry really slow," he sulked, but he knew he already had lost, because she had obviously made the plans in her mind already.  
"And I can wash your hair," she continued, ignoring his sulking.  
"Oh, please woman! Let me have some dignity! If I am going to be wet and soggy and feel awful I will be doing it on my own, thank you very much!"

The first thing they needed was food. Beatrix was really hungry when thick soup and warm bread was put before her by a maid in the inn.  
She had already arranged rooms and had decided to eat while she waited for Valante to come in.  
Bringing the rogue into Alliance settlements was always a bit tricky, but when Beatrix smiled and twirled her hair and giggled even the most determined guard had to comply to her requests.  
She tied up her dust-covered hair and had barely lifted the spoon when someone took the seat opposite her. This happened a lot, so she was not surprised, and continued to eat in silence while waiting for the man to make his move.  
"I hope you don't mind me joining you," he began. "It's just that these weary eyes of mine has seldom seen such beauty as yours."  
_Oh, no_, Beatrix thought. _One of the poetic ones_.  
"That seat is taken," she smiled politely, dipping her bread in the soup.  
"Yes, now it is," the man countered. "Ha. Ha. I don't see no one but me in it."  
"He's just out buying cigarettes," Beatrix said, still enjoying her soup and radiating politeness. "He doesn't like people taking his seat."  
"I've heard that one before," the man winked at her. "Out buying cigarettes, eh! That's what they all say. You're not going to get rid of me that easily, beautiful."  
Beatrix shrugged and sucked at the soggy bread, enjoying the meal despite the annoying guest.  
"Oh, look at that will you," the man said, looking over Beatrix' shoulder. She didn't need much imagination to know who had just walked through the door. "One of them bastards! Someone should teach them a lesson and make them a huge funeral pyre, if you know what I am saying."  
"I think I get the idea," Beatrix said, calm as she always was. _Tough talk_, her mind added. _Now let's see what you do..._  
The man leaned forward and whispered:  
"I think that bastard is coming this way. But don't you worry, I will pro..."  
Valante's bony fingers found a lock of hair that had escaped when the priestess put up her hair and carefully placed it behind her ear.  
"Soup good?" he asked, still touching her hair in the nonchalant manner of someone who knows his girlfriend is being the object of someone else's desire and is determined to mark his territory.  
"Very," she smiled. "Got your cigarettes?"  
He nodded and turned his eyes upon the man by the table.  
"I believe you are in my seat, trying your tricks on my girl, friend. I would be much obliged if you pissed off."  
_My girl_, Beatrix' thoughts sang victoriously._ I love when you get all jealous! _  
The man looked from Beatrix' peaceful face to the rogue, and then his eyes fell on the bony hand playing with golden locks.  
"You bastards make me sick," he told Valante, getting to his feet. "You think I am falling for that trick. You get your hand off the lady now."  
Valante's hand did move away from the priestess, and in the blink of an eye it was holding a small curved dagger. Beatrix was used to this too and put a small, delicate hand on the rogue's wrist.  
"No."  
Valante sighed and the dagger disappeared up his sleeve again. This made the man grin mockingly:  
"That little lady just saved you from loosing another arm, Bony!"  
Before Valante had a chance to say anything Beatrix stood up and when her eyes fell upon the man they were anything but polite.  
"No, I saved my dinner from having bits of you in it," she told him coldly. "I don't let him fight with daggers when I eat, I hate blood in my food. But if you don't get away from us really quick, I will let him break both your arms! Nobody calls him Bony!"  
The man was smarter than most men they had met in taverns and actually went away, swallowing what little he had of his pride and mumbling to himself.  
Valante sat down and put his feet on the table. Then he lighted a smoke and winked at Beatrix. She could see he was extremely pleased with himself and the way things had developed.  
"You have to stitch my cheek again," he said, ignoring the fact that the entire room was watching them, they were used to that bit too.  
"Bony!" she exclaimed. "I stitched it three days ago! Why can't you manage to keep the stitches?"  
"There was a man in the shop who objected to me buying cigarettes, I had to punch him a bit."  
"That's not a reason for ruining your cheek!"  
"Well, he managed to hit me first. I was thinking about you and was unfocused," he added as she giggled.

Valante shivered as he lowered his body into the hot water. He hated being wet, but reminded himself that there was some battles he had to fight for love.  
He hurried to wash whatever he felt needed washing and sighed happily as he escaped the water, which by now had an oily quality and smelled worse than him.  
"Soap!" he moaned as he touched the skin of his arm. "I don't like soap."  
As he mumbled this it dawned on him that he did not know where the soap had gone. It was not floating in the bath and neither was it in his hand.  
After a quick search he found it had wedged itself between the bones of his left leg.  
"Oh, great," he sulked. "I'll be picking soap out of there for weeks..."  
He got rid of the hated object and tied a towel around his waist, carefully eyeing the clean clothes Beatrix had put out for him before she went to have her own bath.

When she opened the door between their rooms and told him he could come in and dry up by the fire, he was happy to oblige.  
"How was the bath, sweety?" The priestess asked.  
"I'm soggy," he admitted. "I have water in strange places, and smell of soap."  
He sat down, swearing silently as the towel around his waist made it difficult to cross his legs.  
"My little ragdoll," Beatrix giggled, touching the bony stump of his left arm.  
"Cigarette!" the rogue croaked, pushing at Rags' basket by the fire to wake the cat. "Get my cigarettes, Rags!"  
The cat did as he was told, because he too loved the rogue, and then curled up in his basket again.

********************************

She is so beautiful  
I've got no words to describe  
The way she makes me feel inside  
I'm flying solo  
As free and as light as a bird  
yet I could lay my wings down in a moment  
To guard and comfort her

She is so beautiful  
light-filled, loving and wise  
Laughter dancing in her eyes  
all my road is before me  
And I never did plan on a wife  
yet she's the most beatiful soul  
I ever have met in this life

For she is like a song  
she is like a ray of light  
She is like children praying  
like harps and bells and cymbals playing  
And she is like a wind  
moving, soothing, bringing joy  
And here am I, destroyed  
she is so beautiful  
I don't know what I'm gonna do when I leave  
except grieve

************************************

**He is soggy! 3**

Lyrics are "She is so beautiful" with Waterboys


	14. Smoke

The smoke had been in their sight for hours. Beatrix' horse was galloping over vast fields, still barren and frozen even though spring was coming. Her heart was pounding against her ribs, because she knew that thick black smoke couldn't be from a grass-fire.  
In the cradle of a small valley there was several buildings that had been on fire, but now only black smoke was billowing from the embers. Beatrix wrapped her scarf around her mouth and nose, trying to shut out the smell of more than a dozen cows lying in the fields, bodies swollen and some of them even burnt.  
"There nothing to do here for us," Valante said as he steered his horse up beside her. "We should go to the nearest village and tell them about this."  
When he got no answer he turned to look at his priestess and was not surprised to find her face wet from tears.  
"Bee," he whispered, leaning over to take her hand. "There's nothing we can do. I can try to find tracks, but we need more people to hunt down those who did this."  
He rode away to investigate and found a clear track where whoever had burned the farm had come and left. As he knelt down to pick up a silver coin lying in the mud he heard Beatrix shout for him. Although it was hard for him to move fast with his bad leg he was by her side within seconds.  
"Listen!" she told him.  
Her eyes were staring at one of the low houses. Much of it was still standing, but half the roof had caved in and there was smoke as thick as sauce pouring out from every gap.  
"What am I listening for?" he asked, straining his ears.  
"There! Did you hear it?"  
He had to tell her he hadn't, before sighing and putting his arm around her shoulders.  
"Bee, there's no way there's anything alive in there..."  
He trailed off as a sound reached his ears, a small yelp or a weak cry for help.  
"What shall we do?" Beatrix asked, staring into smoke so thick you could have cut it with a knife.  
"Stay here!" Valante ordered her. "No matter what, you are not to go in! Understood?"  
"Yes," she could not take her eyes away from the smoking doorway.  
"No, Bee. Listen to me! You are not to go in, understood?"  
She nodded and then turned to look into his eyes.  
"Yes. I got it."  
The smoke was horrible, even for Valante, who was a neurotic chain smoker and didn't really have to breathe anyway. It seemed almost alive, pushing back as he pushed his way into the building.  
"Hello?" he croaked, listening hard for an answer, but the only sound he could make out was the crackling of embers.  
He stumbled around, blinded by the smoke, and cursed every god he could think of to curse. In the darkness or the night he could find his way anywhere, he had never needed much light to see, but the smoke was doing things to his eyes he knew could not be healthy.  
Then he heard the sound again and tried moving towards it. His hands found the cold stonewall he had noticed earlier at the back of the house. Stone meant he was near the hearth of the house, and the fire would not have had too much to burn back here. Feeling his way along the wall he finally reached the fire place and tripped over something lying on the floor.  
"Are you alive?" he asked the body as he crawled up on his knees.  
There were several arrows in the woman's back and Valante pulled up her head by her hair and sighed as he saw the bloody face. She had been rather young, and she would never turn any older. What surprised him was that it looked like she had been alive as the fire started, because there were signs indicating she had been crawling around in the soot. When he pushed her over there was soot all over her front too and her dress had been torn at her knees as if she had pulled her dying body around on the floor.  
"Damn it," Valante swore, realising it was a hopeless cause to look for life in the burned-out house and wrote off the sounds as their imagination playing tricks on them.  
Just as he was getting to his feet to leave he heard the sound again, and this time it was right behind him. Releasing his wrist-dagger into his palm, Valante crawled on his knees into the little fire place.  
"Daddy?" a small voice asked.  
Even the rogues dead heart was softened when he discovered what the woman on the floor had been doing while the arrows in her back drained the life from her body. A little girl sat shivering in a bucket of water, a wet blanket had been put over her head and that muffled her quiet sobbing.  
"Hey," Valante said, pulling the cloth away from the girl's face and looked her over.  
She was blue from cold and he was impressed by the inventiveness her mother had shown by putting the girl right there. The bucket stood in a little niche in the fire place's wall and the fireproof rock around her had sheltered the girl for all the happened on the outside.  
"Mommy!" the girl whined as the sooty undead lifted her out of the bucket and held her against his chest.  
"No, I'm not your mommy, and not your daddy either, but I'm the one who's going to take you out of here."  
He wrapped her in the wet blanket before crawling out from the fireplace backwards and getting up.  
As he emerged from the smoky doorway a minute later Beatrix ran towards him.  
"Gods, love! Are you okey?"  
"Take the child," Valante coughed, holding out the bundle of wet blanket.  
While Beatrix unwrapped the girl the rogue sat down on the ground and rubbed his eyes. He felt horrible, as if his entire body had been filled with lead and for the first time in forever he did not feel like he needed a cigarette.  
"Do you think she will be okey?" he asked Beatrix.  
The priestess just nodded, undressing the child in a hurry before wrapping her in a dry blanket.  
"We should leave," Beatrix said, helping the still smoke-blinded rogue up on his horse. "There's got to be a village somewhere we can take her to."  
She held the child firmly in her arms while they rode. The girl could not be much more than a year old and seemed exhausted and cold from sitting in that bucket for a long time.  
"She's asleep," the priestess whispered when Valante turned to look at them, eyes conveying the worry he felt. "I think she'll be allright."  
"She's tiny," was all the rogue said, until an hour later when he pointed out a village just to the west of the road they were following.

The people in the village eyed the newcomers with suspicion. Beatrix tried asking some of them if there was someone who knew the family living on the burned farm, but they just took one look at her before hurrying off without a word.  
In the end a man came out from one of the houses crowded around the town square.  
"What are you doing here?" he asked Beatrix, his words cold as ice.  
Beatrix explained how they had found the farm burned to the ground and she showed him the child, asking if there was someone who could take her in.  
"Nothing but heathens at that farm!" a fat woman said.  
As many others she had dared to come forward to look at the strangers now that the village-leader was present.  
"We don't want anything to do with this," the man told them. "Those people out there belonged to some sect and would not be a part of our religion. Nobody wanted anything to do with them."  
Beatrix ignored the annoyed snort from Valante and tried to reason with them:  
"But she's just a child! She doesn't even know what a religion is yet. There must be someone who can take care of her!"  
The man shrugged.  
"Not here."  
"Then are there any other villages around?" Beatrix tried not to get angry, but this man was testing her patience.  
"Not for a long way," he answered. "But look, it's not really our problem. We don't take in no heathens, no matter the size."  
As Beatrix was about to answer to this statement, a bony hand touched her arm.  
"Bee, would you leave the child here with these people?"  
"No, not really."  
"Then let's just leave."

That evening there was a lot of fuss around the campfire. Beatrix was trying her hand at knotting diapers, something she had never done before.  
The village people had in the end agreed to letting them buy some equipment for the child, because people with money to spend tend to meet less prejudice, and Beatrix had not been holding back. Now she had a whole saddlebag filled with diapers and other things she was sure a child needed.  
"It's just until we find a place to leave her," Valante had reminded her, but at a moment when Beatrix was happily talking to the girl and did not seem to take any notice of anything else.  
As they settled down for the night, the girl lying between them, Rags curled up beside the child, who clung to the undead cat as if he was a teddy.  
Valante was smoking his last cigarette for the evening, but he flicked it away when Beatrix asked him not to smoke so close to the child.  
"You are going to talk me into keeping her, aren't you?" he asked the priestess, sighing.  
Before Beatrix could answer the girl turned to the rogue reaching out for him with a tiny hand and said:  
"Daddy!"  
"Oh, no." Valante pressed his face down into the grass and moaned loudly. "You two are doing this on purpose."  
"Of course we are," Beatrix laughed. "Daddy..."  
"Shut up."

*********************************

Summertime,  
And the livin' is easy  
Fish are jumpin'  
And the cotton is high

Your daddy's rich  
And your mamma's good lookin'  
So hush little baby  
Don't you cry

One of these mornings  
You're going to rise up singing  
Then you'll spread your wings  
And you'll take to the sky

But till that morning  
There's a'nothing can harm you  
With daddy and mamma standing by

Summertime,  
And the livin' is easy  
Fish are jumpin'  
And the cotton is high

Your daddy's rich  
And your mamma's good lookin'  
So hush little baby  
Don't you cry

********************************

**HAHAHAHA Daddy.**

Just for the record: they have been together for several years at this point, I just never wrote it into the story... Bee is in her mid-twenties at the time.  
I guess that really isn't too important, I just wanted to tell you.

I just needed to give you the lyrics of "Summertime" from the musical composer George Gershwin


	15. What you get from a fire

A small shadow moved through the old ruins of a long forgotten village, making now more sound than the night wind.  
There was another shadow in front of this one, a somewhat larger shadow, sitting crouched behind a fallen wall, seemingly keeping an eye on the town square.  
If anyone had been watching the shadows they might have seen the spark as the smallest one suddenly held a dagger in its hand.  
Silent as only a rogue could be the shadow moved in for the kill and put the dagger against the large shadow's side, saying:  
"Hello."  
The large shadow did not move, and there was a small sound from the assassin, indicating there was something not quite right here.  
"Heeeellooo," another voice said and the moonlight sparkled along the blade of a curved dagger as it was placed against the now rather confused assassin's throat.  
Then the newcomer kicked at the large shadow, which fell over and turned out to be a ragged scarecrow.  
"That's cheating," the small assassin whined.  
"Nope," the other voice said, removing his dagger. "That, my girl, is how I teach you to never take anything for what it looks like. If you let your enemy be smarter than you, you're gonna end up dead."  
The small shadow put the dagger away and pouted.  
"But it's still cheating. I'm telling mommy!"  
"Go ahead." The moonlight illuminated a broad grin. "But your sneaking was excellent. You have really improved by the training."  
"Thank you!" the small shadow pulled down her mask and hood, letting her hair flow like a river down her shoulders. "Can I ride piggyback?"  
There was a groan from the darkness.  
"I'm old and my back isn't what it used to be..."  
"Piggyback!"  
"Oh, very well."

Back at the campfire Beatrix was darning socks, which she felt she was doing quite a lot of lately. Smiting demons and fighting the unjust seemed to have been left to the younger generations these days, but darning socks did feel a bit too much like being a good housewife.  
"Mommy!"  
The priestess opened her arms as the girl leapt from the rogue's back and ran towards her.  
"Have you been good?"  
She listened to the girl and smiled at Valante who was shaking his head or nodding as the story of the training was told.  
"Really? Did he cheat?"  
"Yeah!"  
Beatrix looked down at the girl. Her big green eyes shone in the light from the fire. Her face was freckled and her hair long, curly and a fiery red.  
"She just took the bait," Valante grinned, sinking down to the ground.  
He was not feeling young any more, and Beatrix used to tell him it was due to having children.  
"Oh, shut up!" the girl told him, running over to sit on his chest.  
"Do you know what I want for my birthday?" she suddenly asked, her brain jumping between subjects as quickly as any other child.  
Valante thought about this one.  
"A new dagger?"  
"No."  
"A kitty?"  
"No, I have Rags!"  
"Oh, yes. Then I give up. What do you want for your birthday?"  
"A pony?" Beatrix asked. "Or a trip to the beach?"  
The girl crawled around until she was lying on top of the rogue, her head resting on his chest, and looked at him with eyes that begged.  
"I really want one of those little crossbows. Just like the one you have. Can I, daddy?"  
Beatrix laughed as Valante sighed and stroked the flame-coloured hair.  
"Sure," he told her. "You certainly are daddy's girl."

Ember always rode with her daddy. She had always been his girl.  
When Beatrix realised they had to name the child who could not tell them what she was called she had been through every beautiful name she had ever heard, until she had asked Valante.  
"Ember. That's what comes out of a fire," he had told her, not really paying attention to the whole business.  
And Ember it was.  
The girl knew very well that the priestess and the rogue weren't her real parents, but that did not matter any more. As soon as she was old enough to understand they had explained to her how she came to be with them, and it was Ember's favourite story. When she was little she had nagged Valante into telling it every night before she went to bed, and now she had started to tell it when she introduced herself to strangers.  
"My name is Ember, because that's what you get after fires," she explained to new people, with the open honesty of childhood. "My parents died in a fire and Daddy found me in a bucket of water, and he carried me out of the smoke."  
"She makes me sound like a bloody hero," Valante complained as he heard the child tell the story to some ladies in a tavern, and Beatrix had laughed, finding the looks her beloved rogue got from the women hilarious.  
Ember had come to terms with death early. There really wasn't much choice when she travelled around with her somewhat special parents. During the eight years since they found her she had seen more than any child should have, and knew more about the world than any child her age.  
When Beatrix had explained to her why her daddy looked like he did Ember had kissed his cheek and told him:  
"I love you, Daddy, even if you're dead."  
Right from the beginning she had taken to the rogue and as long as she could she followed him everywhere. When she was old enough to hold a dagger he had begun training her, ignoring Beatrix' protests.  
"She'll have to learn how to protect herself," he had argued. "There are bad people in this world, and I'm not letting her meet them without knowing how to deal with them."  
Now, when she was about nine years of age, she was almost as stealthy as her father, and knew, to her mother's horror, at least a hundred ways of killing someone without a sound.  
Beatrix watched the girl, sitting in front of the rogue on his horse and trying to teach herself to whistle. She might seem like a sweet and innocent child, but Beatrix had listened the other night as Valante taught the girl one of his best secrets; how to hide away weapons, which resulted in the best armed nine-year-old in the world.  
"If you miss with your first and second knife," the rogue had explained. "You make sure the next twelve don't miss."  
Beatrix felt only pride when looking at the girl. They had brought her up in times of war, she had been dragged from battlefield to battlefield, there had been wild flights, fierce battles, but still the girl had turned out to be a friendly little creature with a heart of gold. The fact that she could kill you in your sleep did not alter her mother's opinion of her being the sweetest angel that ever walked upon the world.

************************************

Born with the moon in Cancer  
Choose her a name she will answer to  
Call her Green and the winters cannot fade her  
Call her Green for the children who've made her  
Little Green, be a gypsy dancer

Just a little green  
Like the color when the spring is born  
There'll be crocuses to bring to school tomorrow  
Just a little green  
Like the nights when the northern lights perform  
There'll be icicles and birthday clothes  
And sometimes there'll be sorrow

*************************************

**Even more HAHAHAHAHA!  
I know I am jumping in time here, but just deal with it  
This story is coming to an end.**

Little Ember is the cutest kid I could ever imagine. Especially since if you hug her you might be accidentally stabbed to death by her arsenal of hidden knives.  
Oh, she's daddy's girl alright.

And "Little Green" from Joni Mitchell. Just because it's a good song.


	16. When the magic ends

**WARNING! If you are mooshy, like me, you'll need tissues for this one.  
Consider yourself warned.  
**

It was a foggy morning. Beatrix and Ember was waiting in the forest for Valante to come back with information. He had gone alone to the Bulwark in the outskirts of Tirisfal Glades, because the woman and child tended to make the undead feel uncomfortable.  
Ember noticed him coming before they could see him. Her instincts were keen and sharpened by endless hours of training with the rogue. She ran to meet him and when they came back to Beatrix she was dancing beside him, holding his hand.  
"The guy is captured by the Scarlets. He's being kept in the plagueland in a dungeon."  
These news were not good, but at least they were news. The trio had been searching for one of the Forsaken Queen's men for a week, and the fact that he was being held by the Scarlet Crusade did at least give them hope he might be alive.

The dungeon was easy enough to find, and the guards the Crusade had posted around the area were quickly disposed of, while Beatrix sat sighing in some bushes.  
"Do you really have to kill all of them?" she had asked.  
It had been Ember that answered:  
"Mommy, we just do what we have to."  
It was Valante's words, just spoken by another mouth.  
Telling them to be safe, Beatrix had sent them both off, reminding Valante that Ember was just with him to look. They had both decided it was too early for the child to get some practise with her skills, Beatrix because she felt it was wrong to have a little girl killing people, and Valante because he was terrified the child would be hurt if it happened that she could not finish the job.  
With the guards gone, the trio made their way into the entrance of the dungoen, careful not to make a sound.  
As they reached the cells inside an unpleasant smell met them. The stony walls and floor smelled of fear and blood and sewerage. Beatrix felt proud when she saw her adopted daughter did not even twitch at the smell, while the priestess herself had to stop and put her scarf over her mouth and nose.  
"Found him," Valante told them, coming out of a cell he had opened. "He won't be telling us anything..."  
Ember hurried into the cell before her parents could stop her, and examined the corpse lying there.  
"Can't we just wake him?" she wondered, kicking the undead man's leg.  
Valante crouched down, taking the child by the shoulders and looked intently at her.  
"Remember we talked about this, Em?" he asked. "Remember how I told you there are two different deaths? There's dead like me, and then there's dead like him."  
"And then you don't wake up again," the child said dutifully. "I remember that."  
"Good. Then you know we can't wake him up."  
"Mhm." The girl was swaying back and forth on toes and heels, smiling beneath her rogue-mask. "What do we do with the other people in here?" she asked her father.  
Beatrix was still out in the corridor and had a look into one of the other cells.  
"I don't know if they're alive any more," she told the others. "But it can't hurt to check."  
In fact they did find some people alive, but they were beyond help.  
"I cannot do anything for them," Beatrix said, swallowing the tears as she found marks of torture and mistreatment upon the bodies.  
Valante placed a hand on her shoulder and started saying something when Ember came running into the cell they were currently investigating.  
"I found something!" she whispered. "He's alive, but I think he's wrong in the head!"  
Exchanging a glance, her parents followed her into the next cell where there were two people lying on the floor. Ember pointed to a shadow in one corner which turned out to be a young boy, curled up like a ball. Valante had to use force to pry the boy's arms away from his body before he let the priestess take over.  
"Hey," Beatrix whispered, stroking the boy's hair. "We have come to take you out of here. Don't worry. Nobody will hurt you."  
She glanced at the bodies on the floor and shook her head when she saw Valante's questioning eyes.  
"Get the children out," the rogue told her. "I'll help them."  
"What are you gonna do?" Ember asked, always eager to learn something new. "You cannot heal, that's mommy's job."  
"Just go with Bee," Valante told the girl, pushing her out of the cell.  
Beatrix took the boy's hand and beckoned him to come with her. Hearing her soft and motherly voice the boy automatically obeyed, dragging his feet as the priestess led him out.  
Once out in the fresh air, Ember sat down on a rock and pouted.  
"What is he gonna do? Why can't I stay?"  
"Your father and I have an agreement," Beatrix told her. "If I can't help people, he can."  
"But he..." the girl looked at the dark entrance they just had come out. "Oh. He..."  
"Yes," her mother said softly. "It's better than leaving them there to die slowly in pain."  
"Do you think he will teach me?" Ember asked after a while, resting her head in her hands.  
"When you're old enough," Valante's voice said as he appeared.  
He was cleaning his bloody dagger with a piece of cloth and leaned against the doorway into the dungeon. The sun was just coming out from behind some clouds and made him lift his head and smile.

And the man who had stood in the darkness behind the rogue used this opportunity to smash the pole he had taken from the torture-chamber through the undead's body, impaling him.

As Valante fell forward, eyes wide open in shock, there was a scream. Beatrix did not have time to react before the man slumped backwards, a slim throwing-knife between his eyes. Ember was shaking, her hand still outstretched after the throw.  
"Ember!" Beatrix yelled, ripping the girl out of her state of shock. "Get the horses!"  
As the child ran to obey her order, the priestess knelt beside the body lying motionless in the sunshine. She removed the pole from the hole it had made in him and turned him around carefully.  
"Val?" she croaked, mouth dry and tasting of blood and adrenaline.  
"Ouch," the rogue whispered, opening his eyes. "That really hurt."  
"I can't heal you," the priestess told him, knowing very well she didn't have to remind him. "We're gonna get you back to the necromancers."  
"Great," was all he managed. "I think my spine is crushed."

The people of Undercity turned in wonder as they were passed by a strange group. First there was one of the royal guards, carrying something that could look like a heap of rags and bones. After the guard there was a human woman, and two children, clinging to her arms in bewildered fear. They were all running.  
Beatrix watched in mute horror as the necromancers poked around in the ragged remains of the rogue's body. After a few minutes one of them turned to her, while the others packed away their equipment and started leaving.  
"There's nothing to do. The magic is running out."  
Beatrix just stared into the eyeless sockets of the head necromancer's face.  
"No." Her voice was shivering. "There must be something you can do!"  
The man shook his head and walked away.  
"You don't have long, you should say goodbye."  
The priestess knelt down beside Ember, who was holding her father's hand.  
Valante was laughing, a very strange sound now, because his lungs had been damaged.  
"I never though," he whispered. "I never thought I'd be dying like this."  
Beatrix began to sob and lifted his head so it was in her lap.  
"Don't cry," he told them and smiled. "I am not sad."  
"You'll die," Beatrix cried. "And I'll never have you beside me again."  
"Ah, yes, true." He closed his eyes a moment as if he was thinking. "But I'm still not sad. I never thought I'd die like this. Feeling loved. Embraced. With my family beside me. I am the luckiest man alive... ha ha... dying."  
This did not give Beatrix any comfort though, and she continued crying. Valante looked at Ember with tired eyes.  
"Look, Em is not crying," he said.  
"That's because you are not," the girl told him, and he could see how she strained to keep the tears away.  
He wanted to tell her he could not cry, and that he probably would be if he had been able, but there was not much time, and there were more important things.  
"Em, when I die, you take all my knives, okey? And the little crossbow. You're gonna need them if you're gonna be the best rogue in the world."  
"Can I have the sneaky cape too?" the child asked, holding his bony hand to her cheek. "Then I'll feel you are with me."  
"You'll have to fix the big hole that stupid bastard made in it, but yes, you can have the sneaky cape."  
He pulled his hand from Ember's grip and held it to his lips before pulling at his smallest finger with his teeth.  
"Bee, I want you to keep this," he said, voice more serious now.  
She took the small bony digit in her hand and closed her fingers around it.  
"I'll keep it until I die."  
"Don't be in any hurry," he smiled and coughed deeply, making his damaged lungs whine. "You have children to raise, and demons to fight, and probably some socks to darn."  
Beatrix grabbed his hand and squeezed it so hard it creaked.  
"Is this the point where you're going to tell me to have a long and happy life and find myself someone who deserves me?" she smiled through the tears.  
"No! Nobody could deserve you more than me." His face split into a huge grin. "The last thing I want you to do is run off with some shiny paladin who will corrupt my girl with silly ideas of honour!"  
"Idiot," Beatrix told him, leaning forward to kiss his forehead.  
"I die," he whispered, still smiling. "And it is without fear and regret. I die with those who love me by my side. I die with the knowledge that I never lived before I met you, Bee. You who was my only life."  
And he closed his eyes.  
Beatrix and Ember clung to each other, shaking with grief, while Rags climbed out from his nest in Ember's backpack and curled up on Valante's chest, covering the hole in it.  
"Oh, and take care of Rags," Valante said.  
The girls looked at him in shock.  
"What?"  
"We thought you were dead!"  
"On my way. No need to hurry. I need a smoke."  
Beatrix lighted a cigarette and placed it between his lips, watching how he struggled to inhale.  
"I love you, Bee. I love you, Ember. Now I think I'm gonna leave you."  
Rags lifted his head and meowed sadly as the cigarette fell to the floor.

***************************

If you had not have fallen  
Then I would not have found you  
Angel flying too close to the ground

I patched up your broken wing  
And hung around a while  
Tried to keep your spirits up  
And your fever down

I knew someday that you would fly away  
For love's the greatest healer to be found  
So leave me if you need to  
I will still remember  
Angel flying too close to the ground

Fly on, fly on past the speed of sound  
I'd rather see you up  
Than see you down  
Leave me if you need to  
But I will still remember  
Angel flying too close to the ground

*******************************

**I'm sorry. Me and Val talked about it and he told me it was the way he wanted to go. I still cried like a child writing this. He won't be revived. Because that's not how the story goes. I'm sorry.**

**There is another chapter.  
**


	17. What we leave behind

The woman was watching the rain. There was a fire going on the hearth, and the tea was brewing.  
She was darning sock, and in her lap there was a ragged little cat. From time to time the creature lifted a lazy paw to lash out after the ball of yarn, spinning as the woman pulled at it.  
"She wears holes in her socks like her father wore holes in his body," she told the cat, smiling happily and rocking back and forth in her rocking-chair.  
The old-granny-setting was not her idea. It was the children, and she had always been too weak to tell them "No".  
"Mom," her son had told her. "It won't do for a woman your age to run around getting involved in fights, you don't belong on a battlefield any more, even though you want to smite demons."  
Then her daughter had looked at her with the sparkling green eyes that had made men go mad from passion.  
"Mommy. Old Bony would have liked you to sit by a fire and drink tea and darn socks. And then me and Carran will have somewhere to come home to."  
And thus she suddenly owned a small cabin where she sat around all day, wondering what the children were up to wherever they were, reading letters from old friends and talking to her undead cat.  
"You know, it makes me feel like a crazy old woman in the woods," she had told the cat one day, and then laughed because talking to your cat was one of the first signs of being a crazy old woman in the woods.

Last week there had at least been some action when a couple of wandering undead had come past her house and thought they'd give the poor old woman a shock and rob her for her valuables. The first of the undead had been lucky enough to be able to crawl away while the old woman threw his legs out after him. His friend had been dragged into the woods by something small and furry, and had never been seen again.

Beatrix put down the work she was doing and sighed.  
"Now my pains are playing up again," she whispered to the cat. "Will you be a darling and get me some water?"  
Her eyes were turning hazy, but she blamed it on the socks and the concentration. As always when she got these nasty turns she closed her hand around the little tube she wore around her neck where a fragile piece of bone rested.  
"Oh, Rags," she told the cat as he dragged a bottle of water over the floor to her. "Whatever would I do without you?"  
She felt a little better after the drink, but her eyes were still hazy and there was a stinging pain in the left side of her body. Knowing she shouldn't, she opened the tube and let the small, bony finger fall out into her palm.  
It had become brown and frail over the years and was worn where she had rubbed it like a talisman when she had needed comfort.  
"Oh!" she exclaimed as the fragile bone crumbled beneath her fingers and turned into a fine dust.  
Then she let out a long wail, leaning forward and clutching her body as it shook with heavy sobs. Rags tried to comfort, but he did not know how and tried rubbing his scrawny body against her legs.  
"I told him," Beatrix cried. "I told him I would keep it until I died."  
"And you have," a friendly voice told her.  
When she looked up the sobbing seized and was replaced with a smile.  
There was a shadow leaning against the wall by her fireplace, all cloaked and hooded. Her eyes suddenly did not seem hazy any more as she noticed the glowing tip of a cigarette and a stream of smoke coming from within the hood.  
"You got old," the rogue told her.  
"It would seem so."  
"And you are still the prettiest girl in the world."  
She blushed, feeling the old emotions coming back in a flash.  
"I kept your finger," she told him. "I always had it with me. I never married a paladin. I raised the children, well, children... they're both adults now. You should just see Ember, she is amazing with daggers! Carran wanted me to train him, and he's an excellent priest now. You would be so proud of them."  
"I know all that. I am proud. I've been keeping an eye on you."  
He crouched down to pat Rags.  
"Raggy, you look after the children now, me and Bee have to go."  
"Where are we going?" Beatrix asked as she took the bony hand that was offered her.  
"I don't know. But I hope there's going to be cigarettes and demons to smite."  
"You never change," the old woman laughed, pulling his hood away from his face and looking into familiar eyes. "You are still a grumpy old skeleton."  
She placed her wrinkled lips against his cold ones and smiled as he kissed her back.  
"Oh, shut up," he told her.

When Ember and Carran came home two days later they found their mother peacefully sitting in her rocking chair, Rags curled up in her lap, and in her palm she held a small, bony finger.

*****************************

**Thanks for sharing the journey with us ^^**

**Bee and Valante and me hope you won't get to sad from this ending. It was the way it was supposed to be. **

**Have a wonderful day and remember to hug a rogue. =)**


End file.
